The Voyager Exile
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: AU of Season 4. Chakotay's story about the scorpion, and how they were about to make a fatal mistake trying to establish an alliance with the Borg did more to affect Janeway than in canon. Now, with the ship crippled, suffering from heavy attack, Janeway discovers how many consequences will affect her and her crew. (JanewayxChakotay, HarryxAnnika, TomxBl'elanna)
1. Chapter 1 A Bad Idea

Disclaimer - I don't own Star Trek Voyager. I just own this story though it has some similarities with the Star Trek novella 'Places of Exile' though it will feature a Janeway who comes more with it later on.

Merry Christmas!

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

As her ship travelled closer to the nearest Borg solar system, Captain Kathryn Janeway wondered if she was in over her head.

Granted, her plan to form an alliance with the Borg which was more like an exchange, as she had described to her senior staff, to give the collective the nanoprobe research the Doctor was working on while he tried to help Harry who was lying in sickbay in return for safe passage through their territory was a risk, but she thought it was worth it when she'd thought about it.

But after her private 'discussion' with Chakotay where he had expressed his not-so-private doubts about the alliance where he had told her the story of the scorpion poisoning that fox who was taking it across the river, Janeway had to admit her plans were risky. She also knew the rest of the senior staff were just as sceptical about this whole thing like Chakotay was, but now her own resolve was being tested as they approached the nearest Borg solar system.

Her plans had been made in the heat of the moment. She had gone without sleep for days as her ship had travelled closer and closer to Borg space when their long-range probe had been captured and presumably assimilated. But Voyager had known they were heading closer to Borg space, ever since they had unearthed the remains of that Borg skeleton on the Sakari homeworld shortly before their encounter with those former Borg drones in the Nekritt Expanse.

Janeway was willing to accept the fact she had made her decision solely because she didn't have much choice. She had no intention of going around Borg space after finding out about their war with Species 8472. But when she had argued with Chakotay about her plan, she had seen the familiar anger in his eyes, the anger all Maquis felt about the Federation and their view about that damn peace treaty. Janeway understood the anger, probably better than other Starfleet captains. She had fought the Cardassians before and she had been captured by them, and she had been tortured and raped by them. For a race who believed themselves to be superior to everyone around them, in truth she believed the Federation was wrong to forge the treaty which gave away too much.

Kathryn didn't really care if people believed she was a Maquis sympathiser for having that opinion; out here, stranded in the Delta Quadrant, surrounded by one hostile race after another with the almighty Borg Collective and a new species they had probably just tried to assimilate only they had underestimated them given how Tuvok and Chakotay's report about what had happened inside that crippled Borg cube, and how one of the drones had tried to assimilate the bio-ships' organic matter. She had enough troubles as it was to truly give a damn about some political opinion.

But she could read the lines.

Kathryn Janeway had come to know her Maquis first officer and the rest of her Maquis crewmembers. It had been a risk bringing the two crews who had totally different philosophies and approaches (Tuvok's security training holoprogram was only logical, though truthfully Janeway had put into place her own plans in case the Maquis tried to take the ship out of her control, though she had doubted they'd be stupid to do that. The Maquis had nowhere else to go; it was not like a mutiny and takeover of the ship where they'd take the ship away from her would magically wave a wand to get them home), and the clashes she'd had with them had given her headaches in the first two years.

In this case, Kathryn knew only too well Chakotay was frustrated with her, angry with once more using the Federations' habit of seeking alliances when they climbed to be moral and good, while at the same time seeking alliances with powers who had their own agendas and genuinely didn't care who they hurt when it suited the Federation and their view of the "greater good."

In the observation lounge, Janeway had seen the resentment, the same resentment she had seen in Federation colonists who were angry with their own government who had told them to just hand over their homes and schools and livelihoods that they had made for themselves for years only for their homes to be handed over to the Cardassians on a plate. It was just so frustrating she and Chakotay sometimes found themselves back at square one; she had truly hoped the pair of them had sorted through their differences especially since the Maquis crew members were better off on her ship.

"How soon before we've reached the Borg system, Tom?" Janeway asked as she sat up straight, her mind nearly made up about the current course of action. She was close to simply changing her mind and forgetting about the alliance she had thought up last night in her sleep-deprived state, and just let the Borg and their new enemy fight it out and deal with the consequences later.

"We'll be there in five minutes, ma'am," Tom replied as he checked his sensor readings.

Janeway blew out a breath, thinking…. and then she came to a decision. "Tom, slow us down, warp two," she said, making sure she used the tone where her decisions brooked no argument.

To his credit, Tom Paris didn't argue back, and his hands went over the controls on his console and the ship began to slow down.

Janeway sensed Chakotay's eyes on her, but she didn't look at him. The last thing she wanted at the moment was to have another debate about her decision.

When Voyager came out of warp close to the system, Janeway ordered the view screen to magnify the image. She didn't like what she saw; a planet surrounded by Borg cubes which made Tuvok's report about the life signs in the solar system being all Borg as being redundant. They were in Borg space, it was unlikely there was going to be anything but Borg here.

"Slow to below quarter impulse, Mr Paris," Janeway ordered, "let's take this nice and slow."

Even in the darkened bridge, she could tell the senior staff members - B'elanna who was substituting for Harry who was down in sickbay while the Doctor worked on the cure to Species 8472s' DNA which was eating him alive, Tom, Tuvok, and Chakotay - were surprised by her sudden shift. She could tell they had expected her to warp up close to a cube, wantonly hail them with her proposal and hope for the best. But her crew were not stupid enough to ask her out loud what was going on now.

"Have they detected us yet?" Janeway asked Tuvok; if they hadn't then she could work on her final decision with some time, but if the collective had detected them….

"Not yet," the Vulcan replied. Janeway closed her eyes with relief before she faced the view screen. Voyager was still moving closer to the Borg ships while they were close to the gravity well of a nearby gas giant. It was then she partially made up her mind. "Full stop, Tom," she ordered.

Tom Paris started, but his hands worked at his console. "Yes, ma'am," he replied, too professional to ask her why she was having a change of heart. Janeway was relieved by that, even if it was in her power to make decisions and change her mind without needing to explain her reasons to her crew, something she did not like since her ship was stranded this far from the Alpha Quadrant with no support whatsoever.

Janeway turned to face Chakotay who was looking at her curiously. "I've been thinking about what you've been saying," she whispered so then only the Indian first officer could hear her. "It is risky."

Chakotay nodded, obviously keeping his relief she was clearly thinking to himself. "What do you plan to do?" he asked.

Janeway sighed. "I don't know," she replied honestly, and it was true that she didn't.

Chakotay leaned forward. "We need to be patient," he said, "In the Maquis, we knew we were up against tremendous odds; we were fighting for our lives, for our homes and for our families against Starfleet and the Cardassian Union while we had only scant resources, so we had to resort to trickery to get the job done. But we were patient. We learnt to pick our battles while we implemented strategies that were far-reaching."

"We should do the same here, is that what you're saying?" Janeway asked.

"Yes. The Borg collective is vulnerable, like you said, but instead of helping them why not let them fight with their enemy, and by then we may have found a way to reason with them, or at least found a better way of fighting them than by just relying on a weapon derived from Borg technology."

But Janeway saw a flaw in that plan. "Kes described these aliens as xenophobic," she pointed out, "how do we reason with them and make sure they don't come back later on?"

Chakotay shrugged. "I don't know," he replied honestly. "But truthfully I think we should learn more about these aliens so then we can formulate defences. To be honest I'd rather not deal with them; during the last fight with them, Harry was injured and Voyager suffered damage, and we don't know enough about their weapons to really strengthen our shields."

Janeway frowned as she remembered seeing the damage control report after that incident. That and thinking about what had happened to Harry when he, Tuvok, and Chakotay had boarded that half destroyed cube only to run slap bang into that alien, who had infected him with its own DNA that was now eating him alive did more to help her decision as visions of the aliens destroying parts of Voyager while they boarded the Intrepid-class starship in the same manner as they had boarded those cubes they attacked, killing and infecting members of her crew as they went.

Even if she did go along with her plan to ally her ship and her crew with the collective, Species 8472 would realise what they were doing and attack them accordingly. But if the alliance didn't go through then they'd be attacked as well. No matter how she looked at it, Voyager would be severely damaged, and Kes's premonition about the destruction of Voyager was still there. Janeway just wondered what it was going to be.

Looking into Chakotay's eyes, Janeway could see the worry there as well.

"I understand what you're saying," Janeway said to him, still keeping her voice low and level so then no-one could hear, though she wondered how long it would be before somebody asked her what they were going to do now. They couldn't hold this position forever, sooner or later the Borg would realise they were there, and they would attack and assimilate Voyager. "But if we ally ourselves with them, we'd be forced to go through Borg space alone."

"Which is why I said we should continue on, since there's more of the Delta Quadrant left to explore," Chakotay said, nodding in agreement though she could see the frustrated weariness as they went over old ground, "and we may find another way home without getting ourselves attacked, and even if we do encounter Species 8472 again, we'll be better prepared for them. Face facts Kathryn, we're out of our depth. Stop trying to coming up with solutions without thinking about the consequences!"

Now that Kathryn had heard the same point for the second time in the last couple of hours, she had to admit it sounded more tempting, not to mention better than the first time. But while she was annoyed with Chakotay for being insubordinate, she had to concede to the point. She had always told herself to stop being so headstrong and overconfident, to take other people's advice when it was offered to her, but whenever the time came to use said advice she still ignored it and went ahead with her original plans nonetheless, thinking she knew better. Was their luck about to run out now, because of her arrogance?

A console beeped and Tuvok's urgent voice interrupted her thoughts. "Captain, a quantum singularity has opened above one of the Borg ships. A bio-ship is leaving it."

"Let's see it," Janeway ordered loudly to break off the conversation she'd been having with Chakotay, and she turned around and she caught sight of the glowing extra-dimensional wormhole close to one of the Borg cubes as the dart-like bio-ship left the anomaly, and opened fire on the nearest cube before it began to head for the planet inhabited by the collective.

"Tom, prepare to bring us about-," Kathryn ordered, but she was stopped when Tom's sensors triggered a chirp.

"Captain, there are nine more bio-ships coming out of the singularity," the pilot reported.

Janeway watched as the nine other extra-dimensional ships left the singularity, joining their fellow before they flew towards the planet and formed a rosette formation. The largest vessel in the centre of the formation while the first ship was hovering nearby, clearly not needed for what was going to happen next. "The outer ships are transferring power to the one in the middle of the formation, Captain," B'elanna reported as she checked the ops console, her Klingon ridged forehead becoming even more crinkled as she gazed at the readings the console was showing her, but not quite believing what she was reading. "The power build-up is unbelievable," she went on, and her eyes widened as she realised what was going on, "the computer has come up with a match. The power levels and their signature are virtually identical to a Xindi planet killer."

What?

Janeway turned to face the viewscreen, trying hard to keep the surprise off of her face. Starfleet had encountered many weapons in its time, but the Xindi had shown the type of power needed to destroy a planet. It was a strong reversal field. A planet was bound by immense gravitational energy that was difficult to overcome, but in the 22nd century, the NX-01 had brought back enough information about what kind of energy would be needed to overpower a planet. In ordinary practice, to destroy a world like Earth, it would need the full output of the sun to be turned to the planet for a full year.

But a reversal field could turn the planet's energy against it, and since it repelled rather than attracted….

She didn't bother to acknowledge Tuvok's report the bio-ships had gained enough power to fire their weapon against the Borg planet, she could see it happening; a beam of intense energy was fired at the dark orb on the screen, and like an egg being slowly crushed by a pair of fingers, the planet began to split with glowing lines, livid cracks appeared, spreading as the planets' gravitational energy repelled itself.

When she had been a cadet at the Academy, Janeway had seen the recordings of the Xindi probe, taken by the satellites in orbit at the time, and then later, the testings of the weapons' prototype. She remembered being horrified and terrified that an alien species had tried to destroy Earth and the human race based on the lies of another race, but she had been awed and terrified of the power of the weapon.

That same terror came back as the bio-ships fired their beam directly at the Borg planet before the molten mantle split open, blowing outwards as the debris spewed outwards, compelled by the reversal field to escape since there was nothing anymore to keep it contained.

The Borg ships tried to flee, the collective mind compelling them to escape, but some of the ships were still too close. The closest ships were shattered by the debris, those that were too far off were severely damaged.

Janeway licked her lips. Part of her felt some sympathy for the Borg despite what they had done for God alone knew how many centuries, and indeed she didn't know if the inhabitants of this solar system had once been a civilisation who hadn't known about the collective until it was too late, and their culture had been destroyed. It took a lot for her to resist the urge to reflexively hail the Borg to offer medical assistance since it wouldn't be well received and it would attract too much attention.

She was about to tell Tom to reverse course and use the gravity well of the gas giant they were orbiting when the comm. line chirped.

" _Kes to Bridge_ ," the ship's resident Ocampa shouted over the line (Janeway knew at once that whatever Kes was going to say would not be good). " _They've sensed my presence! They know we're here_!"

Janeway stood up and walked to the rail that separated her from the helm station urgently before she even realised what was going on. "Mr Paris. Get us out of here, maximum warp!"

Tom was already at work even before she said maximum warp, and he didn't bother acknowledging the order since there was little point. Using the gas giant's gravity as a slingshot, Tom turned Voyager around quickly and jumped into warp. But the relief on the bridge was short lived as Tuvok reported.

"The first bio-ship is in pursuit, it's matching our speed," the Vulcan's usually calm and measured tone was urgent.

Janeway cursed under her breath as she returned to her command chair. "Switch to aft view, maximum magnification."

The bio-ship's sleep dart-like form was definitely in hot pursuit, and it was gaining ground. Janeway wished she had bothered to properly study these aliens and their ships before she had made her plan to make contact with the Borg to ally with them in order to stop these aliens.

Looking at this ship as it was in pursuit, Janeway wondered how long they had before the bio-ship was in weapons range. It was getting closer to them.

"I can't stay ahead of it, Captain," Paris reported, and Janeway could tell that he was using every trick he knew just to keep the distance between them, but he was having a hard time. Janeway looked at the bio-ship as it chased them. How fast could that ship travel? How long could it pursue them before it finally had enough? Could it feel exhaustion? Every organic race in the universe had their limits; oh, some like Klingons and Vulcans had greater stamina, but eventually, they would grow exhausted. Surely the same thing applied to these aliens? The same laws had to bypass even the barriers that separated the realities between their universe and the one the aliens lived in?

Janeway hoped so because eventually Voyagers' engines could give out, and then the aliens would be close enough to open fire. No sooner had the thought materialised in her mind, the bio-ship opened fire. The energy beam impacted on Voyagers' shields and the ship rocked, and the aft console exploded. Janeway jumped out of her chair and turned her head, and her eyes widened in horror at the sight of three of her bridge crew on the ground, cradling their wounds.

"Shields down to seventy per cent," Tuvok shouted over the din.

Seventy? Janeway swallowed. They had just lost thirty per cent of their shield power with just one shot. One more blast and the aliens could penetrate the ship, and then Kes' vision would come true. Looking at the aft console and displays, Janeway watched as the medical team sent up to the bridge took the injured party away or treated them on the spot, and in front on the view screen which had been switched to forward view (When had it been switched back?), though truthfully she wished she could see it and make decisions based on what she saw it do. Too late. The ship rocked as the bio-ship fired another bolt of energy, only this time it was less than a shake.

"What happened?" she demanded.

"It was only a nick to the shields," Paris reported as he worked on his console. "I decided to try and make it harder for them to get a lock, but I had to use the inertial dampeners to stop anyone falling around."

"Good thinking," Janeway complimented, "keep it up."

"I'll do my best," Paris replied, "but each time I move, they compensate. That bio-ship is too fast, too manoeuvrable. The fact it's smaller doesn't help. It's like trying to outfly a World War two fighter."

Janeway said nothing about the comparison, knowing that Tom Paris had a fascination with the 20th century, and in this case, it was apt.

The situation was grim. Her ship was damaged, they were being chased by a new powerful enemy in place of an equally powerful enemy, just as she was about to make an alliance with the Borg.

It seemed that Species 8472 could lose their patience as well, just like all the other races in the galaxy they wished to purge. The bio-ship started opening fire on Voyager. There was no finesse in the shots, no attempt at properly aiming the bio-ships' weapon as they pursued Voyager through space. The pilot was just hoping to score a hit and hopefully caused enough damage.

Finally the inevitable happened. One of the shots impacted against the shields, and it seemed as though the entire bridge was exploding.

"Shields are down to forty per cent," Tuvok reported. "One more hit and we shall be defenceless."

Janeway closed her eyes, wishing the Vulcan security officer would stop stating the obvious. But she didn't have time to dwell on it when B'elanna reported from the ops console. "Another quantum singularity is opening, right in front of us."

Janeway swallowed as she witnessed the sight of the interdimensional wormhole opening, resembling a glowing hole in space. For a moment the explorer in her wanted to know what was on the other side, though truthfully she genuinely didn't care. Out of the singularity came two more bio-ships, and she swallowed again.

At that moment, Janeway realised that in her hubris she had caused this. Instead of simply bypassing Borg space, or just doing as Chakotay had suggested which was to just let the Borg and this new enemy fight it out, she did the exact opposite. She had put her crew in danger, and for what? To satisfy her arrogance, her need to always be the captain? She was a fool. She was out of ideas. She was out of her depth, she could see that now. Today, she had been getting ready to form an alliance with the Borg to modify their own technology in order to fight Species 8472.

Wait.

The nanoprobes.

Immediately she slapped a hand to her combadge. "Bridge to sickbay."

" _Sickbay here, Captain. As the Chief Medical officer, I recommend we get out of here_ ," the ships' holographic doctor said, and over the line, Janeway could hear the sounds of pained gasps and moaning coming over, and she fought back the urge to hurt herself for doing this.

"Doctor, how many nanoprobes have you reprogrammed?" she asked.

" _I've only replicated and reprogrammed a few prototypes, Captain, and the answer is no. I cannot use them against Species 8472 at the moment. I'm still having problems with some of the probes' programming. However, it may be possible to use a few for the job_ ," the Doctor replied.

"How so, and be quick Doctor," Janeway said, looking at the screen as the bio-ships menacingly approached them. Tom had managed to fly them out of the way of the ships and had moved deeper and deeper into Borg space, but now they had three bio-ships chasing after them.

"I can modify the phasers from sickbay to carry some of the nanoprobes, and a few of the probes that I haven't managed to program fully yet; it won't do much, it will just cause some mild discomfort for the bio-ships."

Janeway glanced at Chakotay who had hurried over to Tuvok's station, and their eyes met. He seemed to be saying " ** _Why not? We haven't got anything else_**."

"Do it, Doctor," she ordered.

The modifications only took the Doctor a few moments to implement. " _Sickbay to the bridge. I've done it._ "

"Good work, Doctor. Tuvok, target the closest bio-ship, and when you've done that, open fire," Janeway ordered.

The Vulcan nodded and got to work on his console, but as he was halfway through the procedure two of the closest bio-ships fired. This time the damage was more extreme.

"They've destroyed the starboard impulse engine," B'elanna shouted over the din as consoles, panels and displays exploded, and cables dropped from the ceiling and with them, half of the ceiling looked like it was about to collapse. Janeway swung round to Tactical. If there was ever a reason for the nanoprobe weapon it was now. "Mr Tuvok," she said.

"Firing now," the Vulcan said.

On the screen, Janeway could see that Tuvok had used a number of Voyager's available phaser strips to open fire, and she could see one of the beams of energy strike one of the bio-ships. It didn't look too badly damaged, but she didn't have time to take a further look like another of Tuvok's phaser beams struck another bio-ship. The third bio-ship retaliated by firing on Voyager, but Tom managed to bypass the beams on thrusters. They only just managed to escape the beam, but because of the damage Voyager had sustained to the impulse engines he was unable to avoid the second beam.

This time the damage was more extreme, as more consoles exploded. Amid the din and the sounds of rocking and people crying out, someone shouted out, though Janeway couldn't identify who it was.

"My god, they've virtually destroyed the starboard nacelle."

Chakotay's measured voice also shouted over the sounds. "Captain, the bio-ships."

"What about them?" At this point, Janeway just wanted this day to end.

"Something is wrong with them. One of them is….deteriorating," There was surprise in the first officer's words, as though he had no idea how to describe what was going on.

"Let's see it," Janeway ordered. The view screen's visual pick up had been damaged, but she could see clearly enough though it took her a while to see what was happening. The bio-ships were turning a darker, almost ashen colour, and then they lost control and exploded. Janeway blew out a breath of relief. "He's done it," she said.

The ship rocked. again, and Janeway fell to the ground with a wince. When she got up and looked at the view screen again she could see what was happening.

The third bio-ship hadn't been affected as adversely as the other two. Whereas the Doctor's experimental Borg weapon had affected the other bio-ships, the third seemed to be…sick. The ship was still fast, but there were moments where it looked sluggish on the screen as the strange colouration spread.

Interesting that effect, Janeway thought to herself and wondered if the number of nanoprobes fired through the phaser beams was enough to cause much damage. But the ship was firing at them with an intensity she would have believed to be anger. One of its beams struck the hull again before the ship finally lost the battle and exploded. The shockwave hit Voyager more intensely than the previous impacts. When it died down, Janeway got up off of the floor from where she'd landed and looked around.

"Is everyone alright?" she asked.

When she got affirmatives or negatives, she called for a damage report.

"Shields are down, weapons are only at fifty per cent. If the Borg or Species 8472 attack, we shall not be able to repel them," Tuvok reported, but the bad news just kept coming in.

"It's bad, Captain," B'elanna reported, her Klingon half struggling under the stress. "We've lost one of the impulse engines, the starboard nacelle is badly damaged, but the worst of it is the warp core. Engineering reports they had to shut down the core, but the damage has been done. We've lost all the information about the warp nacelles status, so we don't know how much damage has been caused to them. But that's not the worst of it!"

Torres glared at the console readout as though she blamed that for the problems she had. "The core matrix is damaged, but engineering doesn't yet know how much. We may not have warp drive anymore."

* * *

The beginning...


	2. Chapter 2 Damage

Disclaimer - I don't own Star Trek Voyager, but I own this story.

Happy Christmas.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

Janeway sighed as she looked around main engineering where her command team were surrounding her. She had decided to have the meeting down in main engineering so then B'elanna would be able to work on the engines directly and coordinate the damage control priorities instead of being holed up in the briefing room in case an emergency that needed her attention came up and grew out of control as she rushed to engineering to sort it out.

Janeway didn't want that, and to be honest, she wasn't in the mood for the formality of closed doors. If they had the meeting in a public place as important as main engineering, the crew would be reassured, and to be honest, she was willing to listen to any of the options the rest of the crew had.

It was just too bad main engineering was a shambles.

If the bridge was badly damaged, then it was nothing compared to what was in main engineering. Many of the consoles and the panels were smashed to pieces, exposing their burnt-out circuitry, many of the less badly damaged panels were sparking and blinking on and off, and the familiar green glow of plasma leakage gave some parts of the sparking, gaseous engine room an eerie look and feel. It was almost like walking into a haunted house.

The only members of the command staff not in main engineering were the Doctor, Kes, and Neelix. The Doctor and Kes were currently busy trying to keep the injured members of the crew alive. They had transformed four of the holodecks into emergency hospital facilities in order to bear the weight just in case.

In contrast, Neelix was trying to keep everyone fed and healthy. The Talaxian was out of his depth. He had never travelled out far enough to encounter the Borg, but then everyone in the Delta Quadrant knew of the collective and what they did, but the Talaxian was doing his best to keep everyone's spirits up while he was trying to hold back his own depression. Janeway had caught sight of Neelix's face and she had never seen the depression there before now. It was an expression which would haunt her for the rest of her life.

"Right now, Captain, we have no warp drive," B'elanna was saying as she walked them around the core. The warp core was noticeably offline, which only served to emphasise the engineers' point, but the visual image of the core being deactivated only signified this mess. Janeway was just relieved the engineering detail had prevented them all from dying in a terrible matter-antimatter explosion, but the deactivation of the core didn't make any of this less depressing.

"The engineering crew had to remove the dilithium crystals from the reaction chamber when the matrix began to burn itself out. We've also lost one of the plasma regulators, it's burnt out beyond repair. We can fabricate a new one to replace it, but I've got most of my crew going over the core to make sure there isn't any damage to it. The majority of my engineering crew are currently checking the warp nacelles and the impulse engine which was shot. So far," B'elanna's Klingon visage furrowed, making her look more intimidating and angry though Janeway saw for herself the engineer was more troubled than on the verge of losing her temper, "they're reporting the majority of the coils are burnt out solid."

Janeway saw Chakotay look away with his own brow furrowed, but she didn't say anything about it. "What about the impulse engine?" Paris whispered, more than aware of what the damage to the coils meant.

"It's just as bad," Torres' voice was a grim whisper. "It's too early to make a judgement, but from what I've heard recently the entire impulse system in that engine will need to be replaced."

Janeway didn't say a word. She wasn't going to fight her engineer over this, she could see the stress on B'elannas' face, and she could tell just by looking at her B'elanna was not going to back down from this. She had given B'elanna a lot of leeway where engineering was concerned, knowing that B'elanna balanced her job with Starfleet experience and Maquis ingenuity, but truthfully Janeway was not stupid. She knew how much a starships' engines could take, and to be honest she knew that breathing down the necks of her engineering staff would not help matters. She could see it in all of them, they were rushing about the massive room trying to get some degree of order back into the place. It wouldn't help her if she pushed them too far.

"How long do you estimate it will take to repair the propulsion systems?" Tuvok asked calmly.

Torres sighed. "If we worked long and hard, without interruption and without any kind of pressure like answering distress calls or going into battle with either the Borg or Species 8472, and if I had the help of everyone onboard the ship who has engineering experience, I might be able to restore the engines to only half strength. Perhaps a month, but no more than that."

"Can we last that long?" Paris asked, his usual sardonic manner abandoned for the time being in the face of this serious crisis. "I mean, the Borg and Species 8472 are between us and the edge of Borg space."

"We're going to have to," B'elanna said, looking seriously at the rest of the command crew. "Captain, we can't leap into the fray. To get the engines to work, we're going to have to work around the clock and tear the entire system out to fix the damage. We're going to have to refit the engines, rebuild the core matrix and test it all, but even then we may not be able to go fast enough in order to outrun an enemy vessel."

Janeway raised an eyebrow, trying hard to ignore B'elanna's implication she was going to just ignore the current problems and just leap into the battle that was tearing the region to pieces and damn the consequences. She could see the warning in the half-Klingons' eyes if she did that then they would never get home.

 ** _Was this how the crew saw her_** , she wondered to herself, a _ **s an idiot who was willing to get her ship and her crew into trouble?**_ Well, B'elanna was going to be happy; Janeway had lost any interest in bothering with the alliance between her crew and the Borg. They'd had a close call already, and besides, she had been putting a lot of thought into Chakotay's advice about just letting the Borg fight the aliens on their own, and take care of her own crew and problems. Janeway had to admit when she'd first argued with Chakotay she had been tempted, but she had decided to just go through with her plan anyway because she had felt it was a small price to pay.

But now things weren't that simple anymore.

It wasn't as though they had much choice but to let the Borg fight their war on their own, and besides, they were not in any position to help anybody.

"We're not going to interfere in the war," Janeway said, voicing her current thoughts, "we're in no position to anyway, and besides after what's happened, I don't think we'd manage to ally ourselves with anyone. Focus on the engines B'elanna, use whatever you need to get warp drive back. Whatever resource the ship has... use it."

Torres was openly surprised by Janeways' statement, and judging from the expressions of the rest of the team they were as well, but truthfully Janeway didn't care. Torres recovered and nodded, "Aye, Captain."

Someone called out for Torres' attention, and with a nod the half-Klingon engineer hurried away to find out what was going on, leaving the rest of the team behind.

"Alright, give me the bad news," Janeway instructed.

It was Tuvok who started the report. "Our shield generators are badly damaged. They were barely able to deflect any of the energy beams fired at us by the bio-ships, and now they are partially fused. Our weapon systems, on the other hand, are in better condition."

Paris shook his head. "Captain, at this point we're sitting ducks. Without warp drive and down to just one impulse engine, we can't get too far."

"I know that Tom," Janeway snapped, regretting it instantly but the helm officer didn't seem concerned or even bothered.

"Captain, we may need to rely on an old Maquis trick to hide us, that might give B'elanna the time she needs to repair the engines," Chakotay said in that calm manner of his.

Tom turned to him, "The cosmic radiation trick?" he asked. Chakotay nodded, unsurprised Tom knew that particular trick.

"What's that?" Janeway asked, frowning at the two men. She rarely relied on the Maquis tricks Chakotay and B'elanna used to get them out of situations, though she knew B'elanna rarely concerned herself with the rules about Starfleet protocol when it came to working with the warp drive. Janeway had learnt to give the half-Klingon engineer a wide latitude since B'elanna was more interested in making sure the warp core and the nacelles worked longer and harder since they were too far from a starbase. At first, Janeway had baulked at the idea of using Maquis methods, but over the years of being trapped in this backwater part of the galaxy, she had relied on them once or twice. But now Janeway found she couldn't give a damn about Starfleet rules, not with her ship in pieces, and God alone knew how many members of her crew dead or dying.

"We flood nearby space with cosmic radiation," Chakotay replied, "and we hold it in place with deflector fields on low power."

"Do we have enough power for that?"

"We don't need that much," Chakotay said, but before he could say anything else, B'elanna strode over to them, she'd overheard the plan and was against it. "We're just going to have to let out some ion radiation, Chakotay," she said grimly, "it's a good enough plan in theory, but we can't waste any energy. We don't have the power to waste."

Chakotay sighed and nodded, realising that B'elanna was right. The plan to use the deflector was risky, but perhaps the ion radiation would be sufficient. "How else do you plan to mask the ship?"

"We shut everything down, even the warp core," B'elanna replied, holding up her hand to stop Janeways' immediate protests, "Captain, I know. We cannot lose the warp drive, and we're not. But in order to repair the matrix, me and my crew are going to have to tear the entire system apart. And besides, with the damage to the nacelles, I don't know how long it will take to even get to work on them. They're practically useless at the moment anyway with the core matrix badly damaged. On top of that, we haven't got an impulse engine. We've only got thrusters. I haven't got a choice."

Janeway sagged with a loud sigh. Chakotay closed his eyes as well, hoping the captain didn't make any stupid demands; she knew by now that when B'elanna was stressed she got angry, and when she got angry she lost it completely without caring about the consequences. B'elanna was a brilliant engineer, but Chakotay hoped and prayed his old friend was going to manage to pull a rabbit out of her hat this time, though it wouldn't be easy.

The only reason she was able to come up with brilliant solutions to different problems was that she had amazing improvisational skills, but there was only so much B'elanna was able to do with the right resources. At the moment, she was going to need all of her skills just to get Voyager going again, and even then there was no guarantee of success.

"All right," Janeway whispered, though she didn't have much choice in the matter; Chakotay hoped her single-minded desire to get the ship and crew home didn't cause her to make some badly thought out plan. The last thing they needed was any more grief that could cause Voyager to become a target again.

The rest of the meeting was just as Chakotay expected it to go. The ionisation plan went ahead as planned while preparations were made to shut down the warp core, and in that time there would be officers on watch every second to make sure there were no other ships in the vicinity. The problem with camouflaging the ship by using ionising radiation was the Borg would probably just ignore them, but they still didn't know anything about Species 8472; the Borg would probably not be suspicious of the ionisation radiation cloud that would hide Voyager since they were too logical to think someone was deceiving them, but they had no idea if the Species 8472 bio-ships had senses more powerful than an ordinary beings' senses, but they would probably find out sooner or later. Chakotay only hoped that if they did Voyager would be ready for them. He had thoughts of the bio-ships using a kind of echolocation similar to a dolphin or a whale finding the ship in some manner.

But this was not the time for his mind to wander in that direction. They still had plenty of time to worry about things like that, and besides with the amount of damage caused to the ship they had far too much to do before they could be considered battle ready.

Voyager was in no state to fight, even Janeway knew that, but Chakotay hoped and prayed she didn't make some stupid plan that was both ill-thought out and suicidal.

But as the next few days went along and the stress level on the ship increased while B'elanna was trying to restore the warp engines, Janeway didn't cause any more problems. The good thing about travelling on thrusters when warp was out of the question was that while they barely seemed to be moving, it allowed them to make the time necessary to repair systems that had escaped the notice of the engineering department.

Tragically a few members of the crew had died following the attack of Species 8472 despite the best attention the Doctor and Kes could give them, but when Kathryn read the eulogy, everyone could see the lines of stress in her face as she read out the names of those who had died. As more and more of Voyagers' resources were stretched to the limits, the crew had to resort to shutting down all non-essential systems on each deck to low levels while pushing everything to the thrusters. The replicators were completely shut down in order to conserve power, as were the transporters since there was little point except for site to site transports which would allow any fresh and serious injuries to be sent to the Doctor for treatment.

As the weeks passed, B'elanna Torres' work on the core matrix was coming along. While all of the replicators were shut down to conserve as much power as possible, B'elanna had allowed the Doctor to keep his running because he needed it desperately, and the one in engineering so then she could replicate new components. But the majority of components were constructed of materials the replicator could not cope with, so B'elanna either had to make do or she had to scavenge some of the equipment from the shuttles Voyager had in stock that were capable of warp travel.

The problem with making do and scavenging the equipment was when Voyager did go to warp again (the half-Klingon was not going to be pessimistic on this one, though she did know even if warp power was restored using sub-standard components the lash-up would need to be monitored all the time, and to make things worse the warp engines would not be able to be switched onto full power otherwise the whole thing would fall apart.

* * *

Happy Christmas, and please feel free to leave some reviews.


	3. Chapter 3 Repair

The Voyager Exile.

 _Captain's log; supplemental - We have been travelling at sub-light speeds for over a week now while repairs are going on. B'elanna is working flat out trying to repair the engines, and I am not pressuring her. She has a lot of work to do, and even I'm not stupid enough to tell her to hurry up with the warp core. I know she is doing her best, and at the moment that's all I can hope for. She has enough problems as it is. The bio-neural control systems to the core matrix have been destroyed, so now they need to be replaced. It's a long, complex job but I know she can handle it, and I'm not going to interfere with that one._

 _As for the rest of the damage…. Tuvok has managed to restore shields and he has reviewed our sensor scans of the bio-ships' weapons to better prepare us for another attack. But some of the damage is being left alone because of priorities. The biggest priorities at the moment are not the holodecks or anything like that, it's the weapon systems and the engines._

 _Speaking of weapons makes me think about the war going on beyond Voyager. Chakotay's camouflage has helped us so far. We haven't run into a single Borg cube or a bio-ship. Yet. Tuvok and the Doctor have been working on the nanoprobe weapons technology, although the Doctors' time is stretched to the maximum with the number of wounded he has to treat._

 _In the week since the attack, we have lost two more people. Two more people. Lost because of me, because of my arrogance. Maybe Chakotay is right. Maybe I should begin to leave situations alone and not poke my nose into things that are none of my business. Voyager is only one ship, my own words during the staff meeting when I met with them to put my alliance plan forward, now its time for me to put my crew first. No more self-righteous plans. In order to remind myself of that pledge I have had a dozen or so holo-photos taken of the dead or injured crewmen, and the work being done n the ship to repair it. This way, if I make some stupid decision... I just have to look at one of the pictures and realise I could spell doom over my own ship and crew. My role as a Starfleet captain compels me to put my crew first. Not my arrogance._

Janeway looked up from her monitor when the door chime to her ready room sounded. "Computer, pause recording," she said, momentarily relieved from bashing herself as she wondered for a second who was outside. "Come."

The doors opened and Chakotay came inside, his expression drawn. As she looked at him, Janeway wondered how she appeared to him, but she pushed those thoughts aside.

"What is it?" she asked tiredly, hoping it was not yet more bad news. She was already killing herself as it was, all in front of her were a number of padds detailing the ship's status. Each one drove the point in she was responsible for this mess.

"B'elanna told me to tell you that she has spent the majority of the week checking out the warp matrix control systems, but the damage is worse than she first thought," Chakotay said.

Janeway steeled herself. "How bad is it?"

"B'elannas' time has been split, supervising the impulse engine repairs and the repairs to the nacelles, but when she told you the bio-neural systems had been destroyed, she hoped there would be enough of it still intact to repair the rest. But there simply isn't enough anymore," Chakotay's usually mellow face was more tight with fatigue.

"How come she didn't realise this before?"

"Like I said, B'elanna has been working hard on other systems. Her engineering staff have also been working flat out trying to repair the rest of the damage. She's more or less gotten to the computer linkages, but she is now stripping out the entire system to make sure the rest of it isn't as damaged as the rest of it. But she isn't hopeful. The engineering staff will now need to strip out the entire thing, and replace it all."

Janeway nodded with a sigh, she knew only too well that B'elanna had really hoped the core matrix computer linkages wouldn't be as badly damaged as had been found out, but now it looked like her problems were just growing with each second. "What is she doing at the moment?" she asked, assuming Torres had just diagnosed the problem and was making long-term plans.

"B'elanna is planning on replacing the whole system after she's torn the computer linkages to the core apart to make sure there isn't another horror waiting in the wings to make her life harder than it needs."

"That will take time," Janeway pointed out though it wasn't really her intention to criticise Chakotay glowered at her dangerously.

"She knows that, but B'elanna wants to be thorough on this one. This is the type of job she cannot rush or get wrong," he said and they both shared a meaningful look.

There was more to this problem than simply travelling at sub-light speeds for the rest of their lives. The warp core needed to be controlled by an extremely powerful computer system that compensated for the amount of energy generated for the engines. Voyager had once had it thanks to the bio-neural gel-packs, but over the last three years, the system had shown a number of extremely annoying flaws. For instance, once they were useless that was it. The packs could not be replicated, and since Voyagers' original mission was to spend only a few weeks looking for Chakotay's Maquis ship, Starfleet hadn't seen much point in giving the ship a larger consignment of spare parts. That had caused a million problems for the engineering crew even if B'elannas' numerous tricks and improvisational skills had saved them on many occasions, but those tricks could only take them so far before something happened they couldn't solve.

Another flaw with the gel-packs was they were incredibly susceptible to infection or heavy damage. That mess with the bacterial infection caused by Neelix's unintentional use of that cheese created by that weird and disgusting milk was proof of that, followed by that other mess with the macro virus infestation where the virus had found its way into a gel-pack and used the bio-neural fluid as an incubator.

B'elanna had suggested removing many of the packs and simply reverting back to iso linear circuitry, but the problem with that was for it to work the ship would need to be refitted completely. That would take forever since they didn't have a starbase on hand to help, though some of the systems were manageable in order to take the strain off of the gel-packs.

Janeway looked away first with a troubled sigh. She shrugged mentally; it didn't look like they'd get home tomorrow anyway, not unless there was suddenly a wormhole waiting to snag them and hurl them across the galaxy which was how the Caretaker had snagged Voyager in the first place and brought them to this death trap of a quadrant, so what could she do?

"Tell her to get started, and tell her I might pitch in to help. I just feel useless," she said before she held out her hands in an exasperated fashion. "I mean, look at me. Here I am composing my log entry, reading reports, and yet I'm not doing anything constructive. I spend most of my time on the bridge, but I have little to do. Command is more fun when something is happening."

Chakotay looked down at his feet. He knew precisely how she felt, but he felt the need to point something crucial out to her. "I know it seems hopeless, Kathryn," he said, using her name to get the point across, "I feel the same way, but I know this; if we're not in command, and something happens, then we will have problems."

Janeway nodded and she stood up from her desk, hitting the control on her desk monitor to file her log - she could always add another one later in case something happens, though truthfully she no longer really cared about her log entries - and she stood up and walked over to the window, making sure she walked close to Chakotay as she did. Her feelings towards her first officer had been turning carnal for a while now, though she knew in her brain that Mark was still out there, though in her heart she was screaming that it had been so long that Mark had probably given up on her by now.

"True," she said mildly. "But I've been thinking about what you were saying to me in the briefing room, about forming an alliance with the Borg…. I'm tired."

"Tired of what?" Chakotay asked, his eyes crinkling in confusion.

Janeway looked at him seriously. "I'm tired of sticking my neck out for aliens. I'm tired of going out of my way to help people who don't really give us anything back in return, but more than that I am tired of the death of my crew. Perhaps I should follow your advice. Maybe we should just take our chances alone."

To say Chakotay was astonished by what he was hearing was an understatement. The point of Starfleet was to explore space, to make contact with new races, and to expand the knowledge of the Federation. While he personally had his own ideas that perhaps Voyager should limit contact with other races because of the damage the ship got into with all the battles they seemed to attract, Chakotay knew it was his own Maquis attitude that was guiding that thought process.

In the Maquis, the group the Federation and the Cardassian governments had referred to as a bunch of terrorists and outlaws, they had learnt to be patient and to attract as little attention as possible in case it leads to an attack. The Cardassians hadn't had the soft approach of Starfleet. They didn't care about the galactic rules of war since they believed themselves to be superior simply because they were Cardassians. They also didn't observe the boundaries, as the people of Bajor would attest to. They didn't think twice about murdering people indiscriminately or raping women or young girls, which was one of the reasons why many people in the DMZ back in the Alpha Quadrant had joined the Maquis in the first place.

But Chakotay, the leader of a Maquis cell stranded in the Delta Quadrant, had been exposed to Starfleet values for the last three years, could see the benefits of alien contact. The aliens in this part of the galaxy knew the area better than the Voyager crew did, they knew the various races, and they had given Voyager vital fuel, energy and food supplies.

But he could see the benefits behind Kathryn's current ideas. Voyager had attracted a lot of attention over the years. Look at the Kazon, a bunch of savage scavengers who had a clan like mentality, and they had tried on many occasions in Voyagers' first two years to steal advanced Federation technology. It hadn't helped Neelix himself had unintentionally revealed the fact the ship had transporter technology, a technology the Kazon did not have, but Seska had been even worse (he immediately shoved those thoughts aside, since the bitterness he felt towards the lying bitch were still there) when she had encouraged the Kazon to fall over Voyager instead of letting them grow for themselves. It might be hard, but with Trabe technology, they could very easily have found ways to grow on their own.

Chakotay wondered how the rest of the Voyager crew would react to this decision to limit contact with other races. Personally, he wasn't sure if they would jump for joy or worry, but truthfully quite a few of them would probably welcome the news since it might mean they got home in one peace.

"I don't know," Chakotay said honestly, deciding to tell the truth about his own thoughts. "There are advantages to that idea. The first is if we limit contact with aliens, and not get involved with their affairs, then we wouldn't be attacked continually. But if we do that then we may not gain new insights into the local areas of space, so if there is a wormhole or a spatial rift out there, then we may not know about it at all. But I think we should be a little more cautious when we approach new aliens from now on, that way what we're going through at the moment doesn't happen again."

"But it probably will," Janeway argued. "That's my point. I take a good long look at the damage the ship has sustained, at the deaths caused by my decisions, and I start to wonder if perhaps I'm looking at the Delta Quadrant the right way. Maybe I should start to think more like….. a Maquis," she whispered. "

Chakotay couldn't believe what he was hearing and he wondered if Kathryn was having one of her multi-sleepless night decisions where she didn't properly think things through even when it was too late. But he looked deeply into her face, and he realised she had thought this one out through. He wondered how long she'd been considering something like this for, but then he decided he didn't want to know, not unless she refused to tell him.

But he couldn't resist trying to get answers from her.

He wanted to merely know when she had decided to adopt some of the Maquis philosophy when she had tried for so long to be the perfect Federation officer.

"Where has this come from?" he whispered cautiously, hoping he didn't ignite her temper.

But it didn't ignite Kathryn's temper. Instead, it made her fold into herself. "Since my ship was wrecked and the warp engines were crippled, and people like Harry Kim were injured. I'm tired of it," she repeated, looking at him earnestly. "Besides, Starfleet training doesn't exactly cover anything like this, and besides I'd rather be an alive Maquis than a dead Starfleet officer."

Chakotay wondered if he had entered a parallel universe. For the last three years, Kathryn had done her level best to tackle the hardships in the Delta Quadrant as a Starfleet officer. In fact, when they'd been trapped here, Janeway had made it very clear that no matter what they would be a Starfleet ship with a Starfleet crew, following Starfleet rules while upholding Federation principles.

What had brought this about?"

Janeway read the expression on his face and sighed. "I should never have tried to get in the way of the Borg and this war with their new enemy, but truthfully every time we go somewhere, Voyager is attacked and the crew suffers."

Chakotay shook his head. "You know space travel is an occupational hazard. Jonathan Archers' Enterprise was heavily attacked more than once during the ten years they spent exploring space. Even now, starships venturing out into unexplored space are prepared for a fight. That's why Starfleet Academy puts them through such vigorous training."

"Yes, but that's on our side of the galaxy," Janeway pointed out, "you know as well as I do, like everybody else on this ship, if anything happened to one of the ships in the Alpha Quadrant, another would be sent to investigate. Not out here. No-one knows we're out here; even that Romulan we met in that ancient wormhole may not have succeeded in telling Starfleet Command about our situation."

Chakotay was surprised by the mention of the Romulan and that ancient wormhole they had dubbed "The Harry Kim wormhole," because he had more or less forgotten about it. "We can't know that," he said gently. "Starfleet is bound by the same problems with warp speed as we are. We can't leap across space, and who knows, perhaps that Romulans' family managed to contact Starfleet, but then again maybe not. Like I said the other day, we might find another way home."

Janeway looked down at her feet. "Do you know why I wanted to set up that alliance with the Borg Chakotay? It was so we could cut off a few years of our journey. I was trying to convince myself the assimilation of another species would be a small price to pay, but truthfully I just wanted to be out of Borg space."

"It may not have worked like that. We don't know just how large Borg territory is. Even with that tactical data gleaned from the Borg computers on that damaged cube where Harry was attacked, we are still having problems mapping out the full expanse of Borg space. Even if we crossed a large sector now, we could run into yet another patch the collective have cut for themselves," Chakotay replied grimly, and he watched Kathryn sag again.

"I just wish….," she whispered before looking away.

"What?" Chakotay probed gently.

"I just wish Zefram Cochrane had not just worked on a warp engine, but on another propulsion drive that was a little more powerful," Janeway said, and Chakotay smothered a smile. "I think B'elanna would agree with you. She's been working around the clock trying to think of a way of increasing Voyagers' engine capacity while trying to think of a way of developing a new propulsion system, but because of her duties and the amount of work she has to do, its been hard for her to work on."

Janeway filed that piece of information away, making a mental note to work with B'elanna on the prospect of developing and testing a new type of faster than light drive. It might help them get home quicker, but then again it might mean they could take the strain off of Voyagers' engines. The class 9 warp drive had been Starfleet's most high-ranked drives, but in the three years since they'd become stuck out here, that had probably changed by now.

She changed the subject, but this one was a lot more depressing but she felt she had to get it out. She was in that type of mood.

"Chakotay… do you think Voyager has been declared lost by now?" she whispered.

Chakotay looked down, wishing she hadn't asked him that particular question since it was depressing but he felt he needed to be honest. "I don't know," he replied honestly, "but if I needed to guess…. Yes, I think Voyager has been declared lost. The Val Jean and Dreadnought didn't leave any traces when my crew and I were dragged across the galaxy by the array, so Voyager probably didn't either. Voyager came after us in the Badlands, so that gives Starfleet a good area to look, even if the density of the plasma storms makes it extremely hard to properly search, and dangerous as well. My bet is Starfleet searched the area for days and days, while all ships and bases were put on alert. But after three years….," he sighed, "if I were in their position without knowing what happened, then I would say, yes. They probably have declared us lost."

Chakotay honestly wished he hadn't been asked that question, because it had depressed him to even think about the topic, never mind speak it aloud.

Janeway looked down at her feet, and he knew she was asking herself if trying to get back home was pointless.

"We will get home, I promise," he said finally, "its just a question and when and how not what if we don't."

"It's been a hard job," B'elanna said tiredly, and indeed Janeway could see the lines of strain around the eyes of her chief engineer. The senior staff sans Harry, the Doctor, Kes and Neelix were currently back down in main engineering, surrounding the engineering workbench which was covered with complex-looking equipment that Janeway recognised them at once as warp core matrix components.

"We've spent the last few days removing as much of the leftover bio-neural technology out of the system so we could replace it with this," B'elanna went on as she gestured towards the pile littering the bench. "We may not have our top warp speed anymore, but we will have warp power. The only problem is, with so much damage done to the coils, I doubt we'd be able to sustain really high warp speeds, so we'll probably be forced to travel at warp 5, maybe warp 6, but no higher than 7."

Janeway did her best to hide her dismay at that, but she knew it wasn't B'elannas' fault. No, it was hers. If she had only thought through this little plan of hers to make an alliance with the collective then perhaps they wouldn't be stuck at impulse. Besides, warp five was better than nothing.

"We're using Galaxy-class rated computers for this, and before any of you point it out, I know; the class 9 warp drive was never meant to be run by Galaxy-class rated computer systems, but this is the best we can hope for," Torres went on, unaware that Janeway was actually praising her idea mentally.

Tuvok, though, had to be the voice of doom. "Will we be able to sustain warp with this system, lieutenant?"

B'elanna spared him a withering look. "We'll have to," she said brutally. "The Galaxy-class is still the most advanced ship that is designed for high-speed warp travel. Sure, there are other designs, but the Galaxy-class was always designed not to use bio-neural technology. Besides, I can easily replace isolinear chips better than gel-packs, but the downside to this system is we will lose a lot of Voyagers' original speed."

"It's better than nothing," Janeway remarked before she looked at Torres. "Do it."

Torres nodded. "Aye, Captain," she replied and she left the rest of the senior staff and she began issuing orders to her team to get everything ready. Janeway turned to Tuvok and Chakotay. "How is the camouflage?" she asked seriously; now the engines were taken care of, she wanted to know if she would have a ship to use them.

"It's holding steadily," Chakotay said, "although we haven't exactly had anything come our way to test it."

Janeway noticed he didn't seem sad or disappointed about that, in fact, he looked relieved neither the Borg nor Species 8472 had come their way, and to be honest she could not say she entirely blamed him.

"I have made discreet long-range scans of the area," Tuvok said, "there were no transwarp signatures nor any sign of any quantum singularities."

"Let's hope it stays that way," Janeway replied before she turned her attention towards the tall pillar that was Voyagers' warp core. "I only hope when we turn that back on we're not sending up a flare."

"To be honest, I think we're sending up a flare no matter what we do," Chakotay said, "but at least at warp we have a chance of escape. Here, we're sitting ducks. I doubt we can survive another attack."

Janeway glanced at Tuvok questioningly to see how well his research into making the shields more effective in repelling the energy weapons of Species 8472 were. The Vulcan didn't disappoint her. "I have modified the shields to give us better protection against Species 8472," he reported, "based on our experience with them. However I have no way of projecting a chance they may adapt in a manner similar to the Borg themselves, but I am running through the possibilities."

I hate it when Tuvok admits he might not have all the right defences, Janeway thought to herself darkly but she nodded. "Keep at it," she ordered. "Once warp drive is restored, we're going to have to be ready for anything."

Tom Paris, who had been quiet up until now, spoke up. "It will take time for us to test the engines out with the new matrix," he pointed out, "and even then it will take time for them to be re-calibrated. When that's done, shall I set a course for the Alpha Quadrant?" he asked in a manner that said he knew the answer already, but just wanted to be sure.

"Yes, please, Tom."

Chakotay looked at the pilot. "How's Harry?" he asked, knowing Paris had been splitting his time between his duties on the bridge and in sickbay where he was helping the Doctor as best he could. Chakotay and Janeway had been too busy with trying to run the ship for the past week, so they hadn't really had the time necessary to go and see how Harry was doing, never mind everybody else who'd been injured.

Paris sighed with relief. "He's doing better," he said, clearly relieved. "The Doc says he should be back on his feet soon."

Janeway sighed with relief herself, but then she looked seriously at Tom. "How about everyone else?"

"Some of the injuries are more serious; burns, cuts, things like that, but the weapons used by Species 8472 gives off a strange kind of radiation. The Doctor is trying to work it all out, so he has his hands full."

Janeway didn't like the thought that many of her crew had been injured by a strange new type of radiation, knowing that medical science was always discovering new ways to counter it when space exploration went deeper and deeper into space. But she knew the Doctor was the only one who could do it.

" _Torres to bridge_."

Sitting in her command chair, Janeway closed her eyes with relief at the sound of the engineers' voice. She had been waiting for this all day, and she had been tense ever since she had returned to the bridge. "Go ahead," she said.

" _The core is online, and the nacelle coils - the ones that are working - are ready_ ," B'elanna said; Janeway wished the chief engineers hadn't said that she had the feeling B'elanna was deliberately reminding them all of the limitations of the ship at the moment while they were on the move, but she said nothing about it while she waited for Torres to go on.

" _I recommend we start only at warp 1 and work our way along. That'll help me do more work on the engines to make them fully operational again_ ," she said over the line.

It was a good idea, but one that was logical, Janeway thought to herself. By pumping a relatively small amount of power into the remaining warp coils, they could tell how the power levels held up.

"Understood. Tom," she addressed the pilot, "set a course for home. Warp 1."

"Aye Captain," Tom said and his hands flew across the controls on his console, and Voyager jumped into warp. But unlike on other occasions the moment the ship jumped to warp, there was a noticeable shake. It began as a mild vibration, but then it began to grow. "B'elanna, you'd better resequence the engines and the deflector."

" _It's not just in the engines, Captain, it's a problem in the inertial dampeners. Don't worry, I'm sorting them up now_ ," the chief engineer said quickly over the line.

It only took B'elanna a few moments to stabilise the ship, and the vibration subsided, but only just.

Janeway closed her eyes in relief. They were over the first hurdle. Now all they needed to do was to get through Borg space. The only problem was they had no idea how many ships and planets lay in their path. In the past, she had always said they would get through everything. But unfortunately in the past that had always been because Voyager had been in good repair.

Now their free ride through the Delta Quadrant was over, they had to try to make the best of things.

* * *

What do you think?


	4. Chapter 4 The War Continues

Disclaimer - The drill should be familiar - aside from the characters, the ships, and the general gist I don't own a thing.

Feedback - Would be nice.

I've done my best to include the impressions of Species 8472's government and how they operate in times of war. Please tell me what you think about that.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

The aft console on the Bridge exploded into sparks, and someone screamed, but in the heat of the battle no-one really paid much attention besides one or two of the crewmen. Smoke and fire caused by exploding consoles mixed with ozone created by the electrical spark mixed with the air of the bridge along with the tension and fear as everyone tried to remain at their posts while hoping to get through this latest skirmish alive.

In the darkness of the bridge as they were at red alert, the sight of the eerie green plasma fire to the far left of the bridge where the science station was, and the streams of white coolant coming from the torn or wrenched cables hanging over everyone gave the bridge an eerie quality, almost like it was a room filled with spirits from some Charles Dickens novel instead of a starship hundreds of light years away from Earth, home, and everyone was trying to stay alive.

Janeway coughed as a particularly strong wave of burnt plastic wafted up her nose, but she pushed it aside. "Status report?"

"Shields are down to 50%," Tuvok shouted, as the deck shuddered and another part of the bridge exploded in a shower of sparks. Janeway and the rest of the crew ignored the impact and the result; it had happened so many times before it would be unexpected if nothing happened at all.

Hearing the report of 50% of the shields gone made Janeway clench her jaw while she fought the urge to not scream in frustration and fatigue. "Tom, continue on your course," she shouted over the din instead.

"I'm doing my best," the helm officer shouted back, he'd needed to shout louder as the ship shuddered once more under a particularly rough hit. Ignoring the sparks and the damage to one of the bridge panels, Janeway checked the side display that was between her and Chakotay's command chairs, stabbing at the touch-sensitive screen in anger while she fought down the waves of fatigue with the help of her waning adrenaline.

Two weeks ago Voyager had been stuck travelling through space at sub-light speeds, and now Janeway honestly wished they were still stuck without warp drive. It had been all go since then, and although she had given orders they were to avoid any quantum singularities or transwarp signature, neither of the fighting antagonists had left them alone.

The war between the Borg and Species 8472 seemed to have gotten more intense but since the Voyager crew only saw and experienced a small sample of it at a time, none of the crew could be one hundred per cent certain if the war was much worse than it looked. Already they had seen Borg cubes, awesome and powerfully deadly vessels in their own right, be reduced to floating masses of metallic debris in moments.

The Voyager crew knew it was possible to destroy a Borg cube, but all of them knew how a single cube had taken the pounding at Wolf 359 where it had effortlessly carved up and destroyed the Starfleet fleet that had been sent to intercept it, and the assimilation of Jean Luc Picard had only made the Borg's victory that much easier since the collective had taken all of Picard's knowledge of Starfleet battle tactics and operational procedures.

The only reason that particular Borg ship had been destroyed was that Commander Data had sent an instruction into the collective consciousness to put them to sleep but the collective had set the ship's self-destruct mechanism.

During a later encounter with the Borg involving the Enterprise, involving the unstable Soong android known as Lore, the Borg ship used by the renegade Borg drones had been destroyed when the Enterprise had caused a solar flare which overloaded that ships' shields. More than once the Voyager crew had witnessed Species 8472 use their devastating energy beams to blast through the Borg's defences and cause tremendous damage before finally destroying the Borg cube.

Janeway had met many races who embraced xenophobia on different levels, but she had never before encountered a race that was so violently aggressive to this extent. She always remembered what Kes had said before Voyager was so badly damaged, how they planned to destroy all life in the galaxy, and maybe even beyond, and yet she had never bothered to ask herself just why these aliens were so angry. Why were they here? How had the Borg encountered them in the first place?

She didn't need to even guess what the collective had probably tried to do, but unlike other races who defended themselves, this particular species was more dangerous than anything the Borg had ever encountered. She had worked that out ages ago just like she had made up her mind to try to keep as far from the two sides in this war, but unfortunately Species 8472 had started to send out ships to hunt Voyager down. The bio-ships had begun appearing almost without warning, and it made her wonder whether the extradimensional aliens had some kind of method for detecting ships in ordinary space, but this was not the time to speculate.

Janeway and Chakotay read the readout on the screen. "Mr Tuvok, do we have those Borg photons in our launchers yet?"

"Torpedo control and main engineering are both working on it," the Vulcan called out over the din, "but the Borg systems are giving our launchers trouble."

Janeway shared a dark look with her first officer. They hadn't just walked away from the Borg technology left over from when Species 8472 destroyed the cubes. No, they had sent teams over to the ships to salvage metals which could be melted down to fabricate new components, gather information that was both navigational and tactical in nature, and also some of the Borg weapons.

Voyager's mission to track down and bring in Chakotay's Maquis cell was meant to take only a few weeks, so the ship lacked a lot of the resources they needed, meaning the crew had either needed to barter for them in the Delta Quadrant with friendly races or try to find the raw materials elsewhere. But photon torpedoes was one of the resources Voyager needed to conserve as best as they could because when the supply was gone, that was it. When Janeway had seen the amount of debris floating in space, photon torpedoes had been the last thing on her mind when she had ordered salvage teams to board the wreckage, but when they'd found the weapons, still intact, she had simply taken advantage of the situation and she'd had a number of them brought onboard to be installed in Voyager's torpedo launchers. But it wasn't as easy as that. The Borg weaponry had some kind of system that made it incredibly difficult to integrate into Voyager's systems.

It was just so frustrating that they had managed to download the Borg's navigational and tactical databases so effortlessly without any kind of problem - it was a surprise the Borg didn't believe in any kind of computer defence or some form of computer virus which would attack any computer that tried to read information that wasn't their own technology, but she supposed the Borg believed more in their power than anyone had thought - but their weapons had too many issues to bypass.

Grinding her teeth she kept her head straight ahead just as another impact rocked the ship, Janeway ignored Tuvok when he said loudly, "Shields are down to 46%, one more hit and they will collapse."

Hearing that made Janeway almost lose her temper which had steadily been building as the constant attacks had gone on, causing more damage to her ship than it had sustained during the previous three years after enduring repetitive attacks from the Kazon and the Vidiians among others while injuring dozens of her crew.

She had had enough. She had sworn when Voyager had been stranded to get her ship and her crew back home, but she had also sworn after getting a taste of the types of enemies there would likely be lying in wait after that mess with Jabin and the Kazon Ogla when the Caretaker's array was destroyed (she stopped the thought instantly as she reminded herself of how she'd taken the law into her hands since it had brought nothing but death and trouble to Voyager) she would never allow the Delta Quadrant to take her crew.

Janeway found that she had stood up out of her seat and marching towards the conn station, catching the attention of Chakotay.

"Captain?" he asked, but she ignored him.

"Tuvok, tell them to forget with the Borg torpedoes; they can wait till later. Tell them to prepare the nanoprobes and place them inside a high-yield warhead," she ordered, making sure in her tone the Vulcan realised this was one order she did not want him to point out was dangerous or reckless. At this point, she didn't care if Tuvok liked the order or not.

Fortunately, he realised this was not the time for a stupid debate. "Aye, Captain," Tuvok said and instantly got to work while she headed over to Tom Paris.

"Keep trying to put some distance between us and the bio-ships, Tom," she ordered though she knew already that Paris had been trying to do nothing else since these attacks had happened.

Tom grunted as he was rocked in his ship, the sensation taking his hands off of the helm console for a moment before he managed to gather himself and regain control. "I'm doing my best, but these things are as manoeuvrable as we are. Each time I twist and turn, they compensate and gain on us," he replied.

Janeway frowned as she tried to think of a tactic Tom could use, but she decided against it. Janeway was a competent pilot in her own right, though she was a long way off from Tom Paris's level, and he probably knew more creative tactics than she did, and he had used quite a few of them to put some distance between them and the bio-ships.

"Captain," Tom's voice became urgent as he noticed something on his scanners which had started to chip in alarm. "There are two Borg cubes on approach. They're coming straight towards us."

Janeway grimaced. This day was just getting worse and worse…. And then an idea came to mind. "Tom," she began urgently, "take us straight towards the cubes."

Paris's head swivelled round to face her, his expression clearly asking if she had finally gone mad. Chakotay, who'd heard the order, stood up and walked over to her. "Captain?" he asked in disbelief.

"Head towards them, Tom. That's an order. If we can get close to the cubes, the bio-ships might decide the Borg are a better target than we are," Janeway said, turning so she could explain her reasoning to her first officer.

"But what if one of them decides to keep on following us?" Chakotay pointed out.

Janeway had to practically chew the inside of her mouth to stop herself from screaming. What did it matter? They were already being chased across half of the region anyway, what difference did it make? "We'll have to take that chance," she said as evenly as she could, though she knew that some of her anger over this whole mess was beginning to seep through. The constant attacks, the ambushes, the threat from the Borg, the amount of damage her ship had sustained…. She caught sight of the expression on Chakotay's face and she almost sighed. "If we lead the bio-ships to the Borg, we might be able to escape without the bio-ships chasing us."

"And then again it might not work, but it's a good idea," Chakotay conceded, though she wondered if he was just as fed up with these attacks she was willing to try whatever it took to actually save their lives.

"Tom," Janeway began when she felt that her first officer was supporting her in this, admittedly, risky move. "Take us closer."

"Aye, Captain," Tom said, his voice neutral but she could tell he was wondering if she was insane.

Janeway walked back to her command chair after giving Tom Paris a few straightforward commands so she could observe the cubes. Against the backdrop of the blackness of space and the twinkling vista of the stars, the cubes were just two ashen grey shapes. "Magnify," she ordered. A moment later the screen jumped and the two cubes appeared much larger than they were.

Janeway's heart seized at the sight of the two cubes with their bizarre need for pipes, cables and conduits to be exposed to the vacuum of space as though whoever or whatever ran the Borg collective had decided to simply turn the internal machinery of the ships inside out, and she wondered why the Borg felt the need to do that, but it didn't matter. As she let her eyes take in the sight of the cube, Janeway hoped that the outcome of this encounter went into their favour. She would rather die than become a Borg drone, and she would not hesitate to set the self-destruct sequence if she felt she needed to.

The sight of the cubes was the real-life embodiment of the nightmare she'd had ever since the day she'd realised one day she and her crew would have to face the Borg collective. She had decided to wait and watch for any sign of the collective during their first two years in the Delta Quadrant, but it wasn't until their third they'd realised how close they were to Borg space. Now all she wanted to do was get through Borg space and put some distance between them and their enemies. She didn't care at this point what the Borg did to Species 8472. All she wanted was to go home.

"Captain, we're nearing the cubes now," Tom's voice brought her out of her thoughts.

"Good. Wait for it," she said as Voyager moved closer to the nearest of the cubes. The Borg opened fire with their characteristic green light, but the weapons went right past Voyager, towards the bio-ships. Only just relieved that for now the Borg believed that Species 8472 was more of a threat than they were though at some point the collective might change their mind, though she wasn't going to give them a chance, Janeway took a deep breath; this was a risky move as it was, and the last thing she wanted was to get it wrong.

"Wait for it," she repeated as she timed it, though she needed to wait for the ship to move closer and closer to the Borg cube. "NOW!"

Pitching Voyager forward, Paris dove the ship downwards. "Hang on!" he called, though somewhat redundantly as the ship's bow was now pointed downwards.

Janeway turned her head to the tactical station. "Tuvok, what's happening behind us?"

Please, she begged the universe at large, please give us a break, let us get through this-!

"The bio-ship fleet is engaging the Borg ships," Tuvok reported though he did have something bad to add as well, "however one of the bio-ships is still in pursuit."

Cursing the universe, Janeway bit back the curse that she would otherwise never even think of saying on her bridge. Instead, she said, "Please tell me the torpedo is ready."

"It is."

"Good. Tom," she turned back to the helm, "can you take us to warp?"

Ever since the warp drive had been restored, B'elanna had made it clear they weren't to accelerate too much without doing it slowly so then she could adjust the new core matrix so it didn't fry again. It had taken Torres and the engineering detail a long time to restore warp power and she didn't really want to teat the new components.

"I can try," Tom worked on the console, slowly taking the ship up to higher warp speeds, praying to god B'elanna was already prepared for the acceleration. Janeway turned her head to Tuvok. "Stand by the torpedo," she ordered, "switch to aft view."

The view screen changed showing the dart-like shape of the bio-ship as it accelerated behind them. The ships sickly honey coloured skin gleamed in the light of space. Janeway had already been briefed on what Chakotay and Tuvok had seen in the bio-ship, how it had been like walking through a giant animal that had been captured and re-engineered with technology, ironically much like the Borg.

"Fire phasers at the bio-ship to distract it, Tuvok. Then fire the torpedo," she ordered, deciding this had gone on long enough. The phaser streaks both impacted and missed the bio-ship (Janeway hoped the alien pilot inside the bio-ship didn't realise what they were doing) at the same time. The phasers had been augmented with the reprogrammed nanoprobes the Doctor had worked so hard on to help Harry, who was currently in engineering helping B'elanna trying to keep the ship working during this attack, and the alien was well aware of how dangerous their weapons were. The bio-ship was already losing its honey colour as the nanoprobes ate it alive before the torpedo impacted it and delivered its greater ordinance before the bio-ship exploded.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Janeway needed a second to gather her senses. "Tom, resume our original course. Warp three."

"Aye, Captain."

While Tom was working on getting Voyager back on their original course out of Borg space, Janeway turned to Chakotay, seeing the fatigue there mixing with his relief.

"That was too close," she whispered.

"I know. We were lucky the idea you had of distracting the bio-ships with those Borg cubes worked as well as it did, even if it was risky."

"But we can't rely on luck all the time," Janeway pointed out, holding back the anger she felt at the implication she'd been thinking on her feet though she swallowed it down since Chakotay was right to be pointing out the dangers. "We were just lucky there were a couple of Borg ships nearby, next time we might not be so lucky."

"Listen, I've been in close skirmishes before, and I've just had a rather nasty thought."

"Oh?" Janeway asked hesitantly.

"Yes. We were quite close to those cubes and those bio-ships. Okay, the Borg might be gone already, but what if the collective took long-range scans and picked up what we'd done?" Chakotay's worried eyes did a lot to get his point across.

Janeway swallowed as the thought entered her own mind. She had more or less been patting her back for using the cubes to distract the majority of the bio-ships while they dealt with the one that had not fallen for it, but now she was kicking herself for not waiting long enough to put a lot of distance between her ship and the two combatants before she used the weapons.

"That is a nasty thought," she whispered honestly, wishing it had occurred to her to think a bit more clearly even through her fatigue. "We need to come up with better tactics, and better weapons."

"Those Borg weapons could have been a great help if we could get them to work. B'elanna is the best chance we've got of working out how those weapons work, and how we can integrate them. But she's got a lot on her mind right now."

"I know," Janeway said, feeling nothing but sympathy for the Klingon engineer who had tonnes of work on her plate already. She sighed and wished she had the time to get some sleep. "I'm tired," she admitted, "we're all tired. We need time to recover, to lick our wounds, and to make repairs. We also need time to make new plans."

Chakotay nodded, and Janeway raised her voice, "Mr Paris, is there anything on long-range sensors. A nebula, a comet, or a gas-giant? Somewhere we can recover and repair the ship?"

Tom checked his sensors but he shook his head. "Nothing close by," he reported before he re-checked. "Wait, there's a rogue planet. It's about six light years away."

"Better than nothing, set your course for it. Warp Four."

"Aye, Captain."

As Voyager jumped to warp again towards the rogue planet, Janeway closed her eyes and prayed the Borg had deemed the rogue planet useless to them to colonise it. They needed to repair the ship and to rest, the last thing they needed was a close quarter fight with a handful of drones.

* * *

Inside the extra-dimensional domain of Species 8472, a meeting was taking place among the species. For some time they had known about the existence of Voyager and their discovery of a weapon which could be used against them. The species had always been alone, and they had been stronger for it, and then the Borg came. The presence of the Borg had sickened them just like it had sickened them there were other lifeforms beyond the dimensional barriers.

Voyager's entrance into the war along with their weapon had concerned the government of the aliens, and they had ordered the complete destruction of the alien ship.

All had failed. Now the leaders were meeting to discuss what their options were.

 _"We keep failing to destroy the alien ship which has destroyed many of our brethren."_

 _"Our sensors have tracked it frequently. These aliens are much more cunning than the Borg. In that regard, they were like us."_

 _"No race is like us! We are superior!"_

 _"Yes."_

 _"We must destroy that ship!"_

 _"If their weapon is captured by the Borg, our long-term plans will never be completed.'_

 _"That must never happen."_

 _"Have our sensors lost the ship?"_

 _"Yes. Our ships were led into the path of two Borg ships. One of our ships maintained pursuit after being ordered to continue by the swarm leader, who was attacked by the collective, but they heard the scream of our brother."_

 _"That swarm leader must be punished-."_

 _"No. The swarm leader knows his duty, as we do. The Borg began this war. They opened a hole in our space, contaminated our realm with the knowledge there are inferior life-forms outside our home. The swarm leader was obeying his standing orders to destroy the Borg while chasing that starship. There is no blame to be attached to him."_

 _"Very well.'_

 _"This is getting us no-where. We have wasted a lot of our time chasing this starship, but we have had nothing to show for it except the loss of many of our number."_

 _"What do you recommend?"_

 _"Leave them alone for the time being. Let us continue our plans against the Borg, bring the plan forward while we track down this starship and keep watch on it."_

 _"Impossible!"_

 _"They have a weapon which can destroy us, and you are saying we should leave it alone!'_

 _"No! I want them destroyed as much as you do, but we must also concentrate on our war with the Borg. We have called off many of our planned attacks on the Borg, and we have not even struck their Unicomplex and destroyed their Queen, nor have we paid any attention to their planets. By concentrating our attention and our power on these aliens, we may have given the collective the means to re-group. They may even find a way to destroy us. We must not do that. We must launch a strike at the collective before we go after these aliens again. But if we continue to pursue that ship, the collective may probably notice our interest and go after the ship themselves. Only they will assimilate it, and they will find out what their weapon can do. When they have it themselves, they will be able to turn the tide of our war. That must not happen. The Borg must not have any advantage, never mind one we provide in our hubris."_

 _"That makes sense."_

 _"I agree."_

 _"We shall continue our war with the Borg. We shall dispatch our ships and launch the attack on the Unicomplex. Are the viruses ready?"_

 _"Yes. Our final experiments have been finalised. The results are perfect for our needs."_

 _"So the Borg collective will soon be purged."_

 _"THE BORG WILL BE PURGED, AND THEN THE GALAXY AS WELL!"_

* * *

The closest analogy to describing the manner in which the bio-ships left their domain in fluidic space would be a wolf pack.

Using a variation of their bridge technology which was based on the principles of the Borg's own interdimensional technology which allowed them to bypass the barriers which separated the different planes of reality like open windows and doors in a house, the bio-ships were able to track down large fleets of Borg ships and the various worlds separated by hundreds of light years.

The distances in the strange reality did not bother or concern the swarm leaders of the bio-ship squadrons as they took their position at varying points while they telepathically guided their fleets of warships that were already in the strange, hostile environment familiar to the Borg and to the crew of the Voyager.

On one of the bio-ships, the swarm leader of one of the squadrons was in telepathic connection with the elders of their people who were currently responsible for the planning and the attacks. Through their mental link, the swarm leader watched as one of the bridges opened, revealing a small fleet of Borg cubes surrounding several large planets that their ships had already discovered was teeming with Borg life. Excellent.

Thanks to the mental link, the swarm leader watched, through the eyes and the minds of his brethren as they launched devastating attacks on the cubes surrounding the planets while leaving their worlds alone. The scout wave was only responsible for distracting the Borg long enough for the main attack force to arrive. Through the mental link augmented by the elders, the swarm leader felt the glee as the pilots of the other ships decimated the Borg, delighting in making the collective pay the price for violating their realm.

The swarm leader also felt the pain the pilots felt whenever their ships, with whom they were connected to and shared a deeply intimate connection with, was struck by one of the unholy and disgusting weapons used by the Borg. The pain was mixed with unbridled and untempered rage, which was put to good use and more than one Borg cube was blown to molten-hot chunks of metal which cooled off when the oxygen was sapped away in the vacuum.

"It is time," the swarm leader snapped to attention when the voice of one of the elders spoke clearly to him through the telepathic connection from the other reality remained strong. "Tell the others to prepare for the jump."

"I understand. What are my orders?"

"Destroy the Borg presence there. Destroy their worlds, and destroy their ships. We have spent too long distracted by the alien ship, it is time to return to our original course."

"Yes," the swarm leader sent back and the connection was broken.

Sending a telepathic command to the rest of his squadron, the swarm leader's talons activated the sequence that would open the bridge to the Borg's reality. Compensating for the gravitational distortions without a thought, the swarm leader led his squadron through the bridge, powering his weapons array as soon as he crossed over and rushed towards one of the massive Borg ships, wondering once more why the collective built ships of such unnatural shapes before pushing that thought aside as he fired at the cube. The beam of pure energy streaked towards the Borg cube, warping the local space so it reached the cube, and even some of the internal structure of the ship to cause even more damage. It was very unwise for the Borg to antagonise an alien race who had the means of building and growing weapons capable of overloading their primitive shields and warping their energy weapons until they were capable of passing through solid matter, but then the Borg were not that intelligent, the swarm leader thought, not unsympathetically as the other squadron members launched their own attacks before he turned his ship around and watched as other warships left the bridge and moved towards the planet.

There were twelve of them in total, with a thirteenth in the centre. Usually, ten ships were used to destroy a planet, but the number didn't matter. The greater the energy flow into the reversal field, the faster it took for the planet to be destroyed.

The swarm leader watched with complete detachment as his brethren channelled the energy of their warships into the centre ship, which was multiplied with the considerable power generated and pushed into the planet, breaking the gravity of the planet apart to split it open. It was happening already, the swarm leader could see; great cracks were forming on the round surface of the planet, widening and spreading, forming new cracks as the molten core began to split open.

The swarm leader barely blinked as the planet finally destroyed itself, and the small fleet of warships moved on to the rest of the Borg worlds in the system, and he turned his own attention to the rest of the Borg ships; the planet may have split open and exploded, taking a few of the cubes with it, but there were still quite a few cubes left for the squadron to slaughter. The cubes had been boxed in and they were taking a lot of damage, far too much for them to escape either into transwarp space or through conventional warp drive.

The swarm leader guided his ship towards the nearest cube and opened fire, directing the beam along the top ridge. The beam of energy destroyed a large section of the Borg ship's outer hull….

* * *

I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter. What did you make of my take on how Species 8472 communicated? I know there are dozens of sources in the expanded media on their form of government, but I wanted something simpler, and I also needed a way of showing how they organised their means of fighting in our reality.

Take care. Until the next time...!


	5. Chapter 5 Rogue planet

First off, I'm happy you're enjoying my story and I hope you enjoy my future chapters.

As before, I don't own Star Trek Voyager.

Anyway, feedback would be nice since I am trying to do something different. One scene here is "M" implied.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

As she hiked over the hill under the somewhat beautiful, if perpetual night created by the fact this planet had been knocked out of its orbit god knows how long before, Janeway was truly grateful for the chance to stretch her legs on a real planet for a lengthy period of time. Sure the holodeck's exercise programs contained a diverse catalogue of ways her crew would exercise, but with the power systems continually playing up onboard Voyager it was incredibly difficult to enjoy a good hike, and it was always a joy whenever they arrived at a planet so she could get out and breath fresh air for a change.

She blew out a breath and wiped her forehead. The volcanic gases that kept the rogue planet from succumbing to the vacuum of space also made certain parts of the planet incredibly humid. Sitting down on a rock, Janeway took a sip of water which had been siphoned off from a spring, knowing that Neelix was enjoying the opportunity to collect as many fresh supplies as the ship could take after spending days working on plans to extend the food and replicator rations while ensuring they had a good diet in Borg space.

Voyager had been stuck on this rogue planet for the best part of three weeks now so repairs could be made on the ship while they were quite close to a small cluster of volcanoes to remain as close to the gas pockets that protected the atmosphere to help mask the ship from any passing scans from any Borg ship or bio-ship; Janeway wasn't worried about the Borg taking any interest in a rogue planet, there was nothing here worth their interest, it was drifting through space on a random course, there was no alien race on this world (as far as the Voyager crew were aware of at least, though they weren't going to bother looking unless they had to since the ship took priority), and there was nothing to assimilate.

The crew had been repairing the ship in shifts, two or three hours working on the systems of the ship while they had an equal number of hours off. The planet was M class and had breathable air and standard gravity, so it was more or less perfect for them to spend time relaxing after spending months confined inside Voyager. B'elanna was using the opportunity to repair as much of the ship as she could while she had the resources, but the problem was without the equipment and extra manpower on hand on a starbase there was only so much B'elanna could fix.

While B'elanna was focused on the engines the rest of the crew were focusing on the hull or on other systems, Harry and Tom were working on the sensors and the computer, Tuvok was dealing with the tactical systems and studying the sensor scans taken of the bio-ships in order to augment the shields. Voyager had been attacked often enough for Tuvok to have enough to work with, so there was some hope the new shield upgrades might be enough to stop the bio-ships from completely overwhelming the defences, but Janeway honestly hoped they never encountered the aliens again.

As she sat on the rock, Janeway couldn't help but wonder what had been happening since they'd landed on this planet.

Ever since that fateful day she'd planned on forging an alliance with the Borg and it had fallen apart, Janeway had found herself caring less and less about what happened to the Borg. She didn't know if it was because she'd had more on her mind ever since Voyager was crippled to even bother thinking about an alliance in the first place, dealing with the attacks on her ship, but she now no longer cared if the Borg collective fell apart.

Janeway sighed and closed her eyes as she rubbed her forehead in exasperation. A part of her wished the alliance had gone through, her words to Chakotay notwithstanding since she had meant it since her plan to ally themselves with the collective in order to arrange safe passage through Borg space, but the larger part of herself was just as relieved the alliance had not gone through because her idea had been made in the heat of the moment after a single night of sleep after she'd pushed herself relentlessly while she tried to find a solution.

Janeway was about to stand up when she heard the sounds of panting from two people, and she looked around and smiled when she found herself looking at Samantha Wildman and her daughter Naomi.

"Hi, Samantha," she greeted, and her eyes brightened when she locked eyes on the face of little Naomi Wildman. "Hello, Naomi."

"Hi," Naomi piped up.

"How far did you two get today?" Janeway asked, knowing Samantha was one of many members of the crew who had taken advantage of the time on this rogue planet to get out with her daughter. Naomi had been born and raised on a starship, so her experiences with other planets were incredibly limited so the idea of hiking on a planet on a real hill was something of a rarity for her.

"Just a couple of miles. I wanted to take Naomi camping, but because of the shifts at the ship and my own work onboard I can't show Naomi there's more to living than a replicator," Samantha smiled, her expression showing she didn't want her daughter to believe there was only corridors and rooms around her. "How about yourself, how far have you come?"

"Just over a couple of hills. I don't know how long it will take before B'elanna's got the ship working again, so I'm taking advantage of it," Janeway replied, "I've been going out all the time I'm not working. I just wanted to get away from the ship."

"I know how you feel," Samantha replied solemnly while Naomi wandered around looking at the local plants. The expression on the little girl's face was one of wonder as she looked at the planets which were as real as the ones from the hydroponic bay on the ship.

Naomi was not used to seeing plants in their natural habitat unless of course, they were in a holodeck programme. Janeway's heart went out to the girl. Naomi had grown up wonderfully even if she was still young, but what she really hated the most was it was rare for Naomi to get out like this never mind the fact she was the only child on Voyager.

Janeway watched the girl carefully as she went around touching the plants gently, more than aware of how toxic alien plants could be so she was extremely cautious about what she touched. For a moment she wondered just what was going to happen in Naomi's future. She had no idea if they would get out of Borg space without any more encounters with either the collective or with Species 8472.

"How has she been since all this began?" Janeway asked with their current mess in mind.

Samantha looked down, her expression was drawn and tired. "I've never tried to hide the fact we're travelling through a dangerous part of the galaxy, Captain. Some parents may want to smother their children, coddle them… when I was pregnant with Naomi, I was all over the place while I tried to work out how I was going to raise her, but whether or not I was going to lie to her whenever we are in battle. I could probably fool her as a toddler, and I did at first, but the problem with her Ktarian genes is she grows so rapidly in mind and in body, so its virtually impossible to hide the truth from her. Naomi knows about the Borg, Captain. She's known ever since she was able to walk and talk as well as think. I told her the Borg were dangerous, but I didn't give her anything more than that. I didn't want her to have nightmares."

"Understandable," Janeway agreed, and she did understand. It was a bad idea to coddle a child and lie to them even if the expression ignorance is bliss had some appeal to it.

"My mind keeps going back to when that… that bitch Seska," Samantha went on, whispering the swear word so then Naomi didn't repeat it, "and those Kazon stranded us on that planet. I genuinely thought Naomi was going to die. She would have done if it hadn't been for those people."

Janeway smiled, though it was a smile tinged with sadness. She remembered all too well how Naomi had developed a fever after spending a few hours on Hanon IV, a planet many centuries younger than either Earth or Ktaria, inhabited by a race of primitive aliens and savage eel-like creatures who killed two members of her crew. Although things had gotten off on a bad start, Janeway had to admit Chakotay had been right to try to establish a friendship with those people, brief as it was since the Doctor and Tom allied themselves with a group of Talaxians to get the ship back.

But Samantha had been delighted Naomi had survived, and truthfully so was everybody else.

"I just don't want the same thing to happen again," Samantha whispered.

Janeway sighed. "I know," she whispered back, though she felt it was extremely unlikely the collective would strand them on another planet.

"Captain," Samantha said and Janeway looked up, wondering what the other woman had on her mind now. "We know that you were planning on forming an alliance with the Borg, but now we're not. What do you think the collective will do?"

Janeway wasn't surprised the rest of the crew knew about her abortive and unwise decision to form an alliance with the Borg. Word of it had probably spread on the bridge, and then later in main engineering after the engines were badly damaged. But the question threw her off because she genuinely wasn't sure what the collective was doing.

"I don't know," she decided to admit, believing rightly that because they'd been out of circulation and had avoided the Borg as much as they could it was a better idea to tell the truth. "It's possible those last two cubes we encountered before we arrived on this planet were just in the neighbourhood and engaged those bio-ships."

"You don't think they were interested in the weapon?"

"If they had been they'd have locked onto us with tractor beams, but they didn't," Janeway said, hoping she was right but using all of the experience she'd gained in the command hierarchy to mask her unease. "But when we leave this planet then we will do our best to avoid the Borg."

Samantha sighed, "I hope you're right. With this war going on, the collective will probably be more interested in dealing with their enemy instead of bothering with us." Realising she had taken up enough of her commanding officers time, she stood up, "We're going to head back to the ship, do you want to come with us?" Samantha asked as invitingly as she could, but while Janeway was warmed by the other woman's kindness, she didn't want to impose on the Wildmans that much.

"No, it's okay, Sam," she said kindly to the other woman. "I want to try to press on, see as much of this planet as I can before we leave. Besides, I've heard there are some hot springs not far from here, near a lake full of hot water."

"I've been there," Samantha replied, accepting the refusal of the invitation in her stride. "The springs are something. I won't spoil it. Naomi loves them."

"I'm not surprised, she's probably never imagined seeing anything like that. Anyway, see you later Sam, bye Naomi," Janeway said as she got up and she and the Wildmans parted company.

"Bye captain," Samantha replied with a wave.

"Bye," Naomi copied the wave, though more shyly than her mother.

The trip to the hot springs was certainly enjoyable since it gave Janeway the chance to get some much-needed exercise. The hot springs were in a part of a small forest near the rocky hills and the valley Voyager had landed in only a few weeks ago. Janeway hadn't expected herself to take advantage of the brief lull they had on their hands, but she enjoyed spending as much time as she could exploring this rogue planet. She had visited rogues before during her career, surveyed them. But now…. Now she was taking advantage of this brief shore leave, much like she had done on the planet the Briori had used to imprison the 37s. If there was one thing Janeway had come to accept during this journey, it was that opportunities to get out like this were going to be rare. It was good to have a change of scenery.

Hearing the sound of hot springs nearby broke through her thoughts and Janeway quickened her pace towards the springs. As she walked through the trees, she found herself looking at the water in clear pools that seemed to glow in the perpetual darkness. Smiling at the sight of the water, Janeway walked around the pools, hoping to find one where she could get some privacy, and with that in mind she took out her tricorder and scanned the local area. To her annoyance, there was one person here. Sighing in irritation Janeway walked around the pools, following the tricorder's directions while she came across a small pile of boulders. Climbing the boulders wasn't a problem, they weren't particularly high nor were they really steep.

As she clambered up the boulders to see who it was, she gasped when she saw it was Chakotay. It made sense that her first officer had gone out on his own, and it brought back memories of the planet they'd named New Earth.

Hiding in the shadows, Janeway watched as Chakotay, clad only in a pair of swimming shorts that clung to his body as though they'd been spray-painted onto his skin. Watching him made her feel enthralled. She had been attracted to Chakotay for the past three years even if she had done her level best to deny it. Stupid, but true. She remembered how she had given Chakotay a great deal of grief during the early days of their partnership, particularly when Voyager got caught up in that black hole. Chakotay had fought hard for B'elanna to be made chief engineer. She had resisted because B'elanna was a member of the Maquis (Janeway was not stupid; while the Maquis crew had moved on and had integrated with the Starfleet crew on Voyager, they still saw themselves as Maquis), she had a violent, impatient streak and she hated Starfleet's rules. To make matters worse she had assaulted Joe Carrey, who was the ideal candidate to take over the engineering detail. But B'elanna had won the role with her insights and with their rapport that had developed nicely during the whole mess.

At the time, Chakotay and her were still trying to find a good means of working together. But she did see him as attractive, but she was still somewhat mystified by his question to her of if Voyager hadn't survived that battle with Jabin's ships and the Maquis ship Valjean was all that was left of the two ships, would she have served under him. She still wasn't sure if Chakotay meant that in a hierarchy sense, or in a sexual sense. She didn't really care.

Chakotay got into the water and he began to do a few lengths. Janeway licked her lips at the sight, cursing the fact she'd had the perfect opportunity to begin something big with the man on New Earth but had denied it because of Starfleet rules.

What did it matter? Voyager was thousands of light years away from Earth, and as Chakotay and some of the other members of the crew said, more than once, Starfleet did not exist out here. It didn't make any difference to her if Starfleet command frowned on her decisions, she had made them out of necessity.

Besides, why should it make any difference if she and her crew formed relationships with one another? The rules over the command personnel of a starship or a space station were clear, no relationships. Those were the kinds of rules enforced and delighted upon by arrogant admirals like Nechayev. As she watched as the man she fancied though she was unsure if he felt the same way about her, Janeway realised she did not give a damn about that stupid rule. With that in mind, she stood up and walked around the pool. Chakotay was too busy with his swimming to notice her, and he took a deep dive like a whale and stayed underwater for a few minutes before he rose back up to the surface to take a breath of fresh air.

While he was busy clearing his airways and taking in the fresh air, Janeway smiled at him, "Good dive?" she asked, taking him by surprise and letting him know she was there.

Heading whipping around like a lasso Chakotay pressed a hand to his chest. "You scared me," he chided her, but his expression brightened. "Yeah, I did. The water is not quite as deep as I'd have liked, but its good enough for a few lengths."

Janeway nodded and she started taking off her clothes.

"Are you getting in?" Chakotay asked her.

"Yes, I've been meaning to have a swim ever since the pools were found. I've been hiking all over the place, and I wanted to try something new," she replied, slipping off her shoes and then her trousers. Chakotay watched as she got undressed, and he swallowed slightly when he saw her long, toned legs and her curves. He had seen her more or less like this before, on New Earth. He had hoped they would have begun some kind of relationship, but it hadn't happened. When she was in the water, dressed only in her bra and underwear, she dipped her toes into the water experimentally to get her body accustomed to the temperature, before she slid into the pool.

Janeway took a moment to adjust to the water before she began to swim in a circle around her first officer. She decided to tease him slightly by diving beneath the surface and she dove down quite far in the water. The pool water was like swimming in milk but she could she Chakotay's feet. Smirking mentally she swam towards him and lightly stroked his skin. He jerked in surprise and she surfaced.

"Was that you?" Chakotay asked.

"Yes, sorry if I spooked you," Janeway smiled before she lay on her back and performed a backstroke. Chakotay' eyes fixed on her body as she swam around him before he lay on his own back and performed a few backstrokes himself. The two got into a kind of a race, and they swam back to see how many times they could go around the pool and which one of them was faster. By the end of it they were both slightly worn out, but they started having fun in the pool because Chakotay took another deep dive and he went underwater again. At first, Janeway thought he would surface much as she had, but he didn't.

"Chakotay?" she called out.

No answer.

"Chakotay?" she called again, wondering if he was alright as she became frightened.

Suddenly she felt two hands slip over her head and over her eyes. Startled, Janeway screamed and she swung around and she found herself looking at a decidedly mischievous looking Chakotay. Huffing, she pretended to be angry in order to cover up her own shock and horror she was suddenly under attack.

Janeway smacked him on the chest with both hands. "Don't do that, you scared me!"

Chakotay laughed and grabbed onto her hands gently but firmly. "Sorry, I couldn't resist," he said contritely, but she could see the smirk on his face that showed he still thought his prank was amusing. Janeway huffed and scowled at him but it faded quickly, and she smirked back at him. On impulse, she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. Janeway felt him start in surprise but he leaned into the kiss and began to take control of the kiss before they came up for air.

"I thought-," Chakotay whispered breathlessly.

Janeway sighed, remembering how she had been more interested in maintaining the status quo during that time when it had looked like they would have both been trapped on that damn planet, and they would have been as well if the Vidiian scientist Danara Pel hadn't come through for them. "I know, I was stupid." Suddenly she was nervous. "Listen, if you're not interested-," she began, but he cut her off.

Chakotay was slightly annoyed with the woman so close to him. After kissing him and saying she was stupid, she was suddenly falling into her "I'm the Captain - I have to be better than all" attitude that had always frustrated him no end. "I am," he broke her off and he wrapped his arms around her tightly, "I just wish you were able to look past your rank. There are many Starfleet captains who have relationships with members of their crew. No-one really cares about those stupid regulations. Why do you put so much stock into them, Kathryn? Just be honest."

Janeway was partly annoyed by his interruption but she was even more annoyed because she would have to admit to one of her greatest weaknesses. In the end, she blew out a breath and looked up at him earnestly. "I was frightened," she replied when she decided to be honest, "I didn't want to get into a relationship with you and become afraid of every single decision I made because I was worried about what it might do to you."

She was telling the truth. She had longed to form a relationship with Chakotay for a long time ever since she'd decided she wasn't going to see Mark anytime soon. But she had been worried about something happening to Chakotay which would break her heart, so she had hidden in a stack of Starfleet regulations which were largely ignored because they were a formality and since Starfleet itself was a maze of relationships with officers married to one another.

But Voyager's case was different. Unlike a Galaxy-class starship, the Intrepid-class was not designed for long-term space missions, never mind a long journey in the Delta Quadrant, and there were no facilities onboard the ship for families or for civilians. The team responsible for the design and the construction of Voyager and her sister ships hadn't seen the point, but then they had never imagined one of the Intrepid-class being whisked away from the Alpha Quadrant and brought into the Delta Quadrant by a powerful if incredibly short-sighted entity who couldn't see he was just making a society dependent on him and needed offspring in order to carry on with the work he'd started.

After shoving aside her old anger towards the Caretaker and his species to the back of her mind, Janeway once more focused on her earlier thoughts. Not long ago, due to outside intervention, Kes had gone through a process where she would have been forced to have children of her own, and it had gotten Janeway thinking about the possibility of children on the ship. If they were in the Alpha Quadrant, close to Federation planets, then she wouldn't have been worried.

But out here where the rules were thrown out of the equation, hostile races either wanting their organs or their technology or just for them to leave or if they were just in the way, Voyager was travelling in a death trap, and their current situation was proof of it because she hadn't bothered to think of a proper plan. She had put some self-righteous arrogance before the greater good of her ship and her crew. Another captain in Starfleet would never have come up with the plan to help the Borg in the first place, but not her. It was academic now, but it was the truth.

Naomi Wildman was a different case. She was the only child on board the ship, but Janeway genuinely did not want any more children onboard the ship until they had a better plan on how to protect and nurture them. But Chakotay's old point during that mess when Kes had gone into her elogium earlier than Ocampan biology allowed about allowing children on board because of the original projections of their journey through space would mean they would need children on the ship in order to take over still haunted her. Janeway had refused to give the idea any credence because if they just relied on their own warp drive to get home, then maybe it would be a good move, but she didn't like the idea of children taking over from their parents on a ship so they could reach a planet they had only heard about in stories and lessons. It just didn't feel right to hand over her responsibility of getting her ship and crew home to another generation, and besides, they were now in Borg space where the collective was at war with another race. Janeway had ordered B'elanna to download as much as she could from the database of that dormant cube in the Nekritt Expanse. She had wanted tactical information, star charts but also technical information. There was little about Borg transwarp technology which had been a blow since the knowledge could have helped improve Voyager's warp engines dramatically, or at least given B'elanna a chance to work out how transwarp technology worked, but there had only been vague information about "hubs" and "transwarp coils" which were a part of Borg ships.

Janeway already had plans in mind to acquire one at some point.

"I didn't think of it like that," Chakotay's quiet reply made her look into his dark eyes, and she saw the solemn sincerity in them. "But the risk is always part of the game-," he went on.

"I know," she stopped him there and then, "and I've already made up my mind to limit Voyager's contact with alien races unless absolutely necessary. I only hope…..," she trailed off and looked at him hopefully, "do you think we can make it work?"

Chakotay's only answer was to kiss her again. Together they both sank beneath the surface of the pool...

* * *

"I've done as much as I can on the engines, Captain," B'elanna was saying as she led Janeway and Chakotay into main engineering. The engine room was certainly showing signs of major maintenance in progress. There were panels ripped off the walls exposing circuitry and other components, and half of the engineering area was almost stripped through to the bulkheads, with members of the engineering crew working on various conduits or panels. "The time we've been here has given me enough time to properly look at the warp systems whilst we're not moving. I think I've managed to restore the warp drive to full power, and the new control matrix has been looked at," she carried on.

Janeway looked at the haggard face of her chief engineer. She could tell that despite the time she'd spent on the rogue planet, B'elanna had been stressed out because of her duties but she had seen the other woman with Tom Paris on the rogue planet.

It was at that point Janeway made her decision. "How soon until all the repairs are complete?" she asked softly with very little of her command authority in her voice.

B'elanna let out a sigh as she looked around the engine room and turned to face Janeway again; the captain could just tell the other woman was mentally counting on what else needed doing. B'elanna had put the engines and the defence systems before everything else though she'd had Harry Kim, who was now newly healed and back to normal after Species 8472 had infected him with its DNA and nearly ate him to death, take charge in that area to take the strain off of her shoulders, but there was a vast amount of work for her to do still.

"Another week or so, give or take," B'elanna was not going to apologise for the delay, not that Janeway could blame her. Although she wanted to get the ship and crew home, Janeway had come to see, especially after the recent events, that Voyager could only take so much. Besides, the longer the ship's systems were left patched up, the more trouble they'd have in the future.

"I'll give you another three weeks," Janeway ignored the surprise of her first officer and her chief engineer, "just take your time. Also get some rest. You've earned it."

Janeway had learnt the easy and the hard way how to read ordinary Klingon expressions during her career. It helped that Klingons broadcasted their emotions and their thoughts an hour ahead before they did anything, so it hadn't been a problem for her to learn how to do the same with B'elanna, who was looking at her with surprise and curiosity. Janeway could very well understand the reasoning behind those thoughts; she was renowned for a quick look around the Delta Quadrant and trying to nip home in time for tea, but right now all she wanted was her ship and her crew rested.

Besides, while they were on this planet, the Borg were taking a beating as no-one could believe.

"Okay," B'elanna said, looking uncertainly at Chakotay for a moment before she was about to leave, but she hung around still. "Don't you want to hear anything else?" she asked.

Janeway nodded. "Okay, what is it?"

"We need to replenish the dilithium supply. We have enough crystals for 8 months and we can re-crystallise them and restore them to full power, but the problem with re-crystallisation is, as you know when they're recharged, the amount of energy they give off is slightly less than it had been before."

Janeway sighed. There were times she both blessed and cursed Ambassador Spock for coming up with the re-crystallisation matrix that allowed dilithium crystals to be reused, and this was one of those moments. The re-crystallisation of dilithium allowed them to reuse a crystal that, in the 22nd-23rd centuries, would have been scrapped long before, and it did a lot for B'elanna's state of mind.

The tricky part was the re-crystallisation always made the crystals lose some of their energy, even if they lasted longer than they had before.

"And being stuck in Borg space doesn't help matters," Janeway added in a voice that was almost an idle thought spoken out loud, though her two officers knew it wasn't.

"Exactly," B'elanna's face was serious. "When we get back out there, I want to try and find one of those transwarp coils described in the Borg database. Even if it shaves only a few years under ten on our journey, it might be enough to get us out of here."

"We know how you feel, B'elanna," Chakotay said, speaking for the first time; Janeway wondered why he had been quiet for this one, but she could see he was busily looking around the engineering section. "We'll do our best."

When they were finished both Janeway and Chakotay left the engineering room. "I wish we could find some way to help her," Chakotay remarked.

"What do you mean?"

"These power shortages. I just wish the designers of these ships had thought about some secondary means for a starship to be powered."

Janeway sighed. "I know," she said, "but Starfleet never considered the possibility of a starship being lost this far out."

Chakotay paused, biting back the urge to point out that Starfleet rarely considered many other possibilities, but ever since he had become Kathryn's lover he didn't want to push things.

The repairs to Voyager carried on for the next week, and in that time the crew took advantage of the lull to have a rather basic and rushed shore leave, though it wasn't completely fun and games as the ship was repaired as best as it could. But the ship would not leave the rogue planet for another two weeks.

Voyager had spent three years travelling and while Janeway had authorised numerous repairs and overhauls, the engineering crew had rarely had the opportunity to carry out a really decent overhaul. Although she hated doing it, Janeway decided to order the entire crew to carry out the maintenance work first since it was not fair for the engineering crew to do all of the work when the rest of the crew were more than up to the task to pitch in and help. Janeway compromised with the crew before anyone could protest and say if she did that they wouldn't have any free time; as long as the ship underwent the overhaul they could spend a couple of weeks relaxing on the rogue planet as it drifted through space and had a basic shore leave.

Janeway sympathised with the crew; most of their off-duty time was taken up with their hobbies or their time on the holodeck where they played their favourite programmes, but it was incredibly rare for any of them to actually spend time on a real world.

Their first shore leave in the Delta Quadrant had been on Sikari, though it hadn't lasted long since they discovered the inhabitants of that planet had only invited them to get stories and then discard the crew when they became boring.

Voyager's time on the rogue planet was not wasted. For three years since their entry into the Delta Quadrant B'elanna Torres and the engineering crew had patched up as many systems as they could for their journey home, and while they had done a good job, there were still a number of systems that required a great deal of work. B'elanna was dismayed with the amount of work they needed to do now they finally had the opportunity to strip out as much of the ship's systems as they could to get to the damage. Although B'elanna and her crew had worked hard on keeping the ship moving for three years, servicing as much as they could and improvising where they could, they were not miracle workers who could wave a magic wand and the problem was solved though they did a good job with everything else.

* * *

Sitting in her ready room reading one of the latest reports, Janeway was relieved the ship was finally being serviced however briefly. As she drank Neelix's latest attempt at creating a coffee substitute since B'elanna had taken the replicators offline while she performed a few checks over the system as well as the similar transporter system, wincing at the taste and was left wondering what the hell passed for taste buds in a Talaxian's mouth, Janeway was starting to wonder if perhaps the ship should be landed on a planet once every few months or so to perform some routine maintenance.

The advantages were certainly clear enough in her mind as she read the report. Thanks to this brief stopover alone Voyager had undergone some brief repairs that had cleared up some of the damage, the warp and impulse engines were being serviced and repaired even if B'elanna and the other engineers onboard the ship didn't have the proper resources to do a proper overhaul.

As she thought about it, the more tempted Janeway was to make sure it happened. She also couldn't ignore the fact their brief respite from the grief caused by the war between the Borg and Species 8472 had also given Tuvok and Harry an opportunity to work on the sensors, the computer cores, the ship's weapons and the shields.

Thinking about the war made Janeway grimace. They had no idea what had been happening ever since they'd been forced to land on this planet, and they had no idea how long it would be before the Borg found them, if indeed the collective even suspected it and had sent a cube after them. So far they were lucky. Tuvok had sent out security teams armed with tricorders with information gleaned by the Doctor thanks to the remains of that Borg drone they had found on that derelict cube only a few months ago and phaser rifles. Although they were primarily keeping a watch out for the Borg, regardless of Kes's warning that it wasn't the collective they should be worried about, but their new enemy, Tuvok also made sure all of the security teams watched out for Species 8472.

So far they had been lucky, but Janeway had learnt from her three years luck only lasted so long. Sooner or later the Borg or Species 8472 could figure out they were on the surface of the rogue, and launch an attack and both were more than capable of devastating or destroying a planet.

Janeway was tempted to order a shuttle to lift off and peek out of the atmosphere to find out if it was safe to leave, but she decided against it. She didn't want to worry the crew. They had enough on their minds as it was, and although she would love nothing more than to stay on this planet for a while longer since she had gotten the bug enjoying what this planet had to offer. It was uninhabited, it was peaceful, it had already brought her and Chakotay together, and it had allowed her crew a chance to both repair the ship and look at systems that were damaged but no-one had deemed them important or vital enough to repair properly and had simply been neglected as a result, and it had allowed everyone the chance to have a prolonged rest where shift rotations weren't a major factor.

Chucking the padd down on the table and standing up and walking over to the viewing windows, Janeway folded her arms and became lost in her thoughts for a moment before the door chimed. Sighing and wondering what it was now, Janeway turned to face her visitor. "Come," she called.

The door opened and Kes walked in. Janeway smiled at the young Ocampan, still awed by the changes in her.

She had never been one hundred percent sure about the shortness of the average Ocampan's lifespan (Tanis and the other Ocampans on Suspiria's array were an exception to the rule) since it progressed so quickly and Kes aged a lot faster than all of them. Now nearing her midlife at five, Kes was nearly four years old, and she had outgrown her elfish innocence that had bizarrely existed hand in hand with a truly wise and kind soul that seemed more online with a Vulcan. She had already ended her relationship with Neelix and had begun to grow out of her role of the head nurse and aeroponic supervisor, eager to experience more since she only had a few years left to live.

She had stopped cutting her hair and now she had strawberry blonde curls (no-one had expected that) hanging down to her shoulders, and she had begun wearing outfits designed to hug her lithe frame in the hopes of snagging a suitable mate when the elogium hit her.

After that mess with those space-dwelling life-forms they found in their second year and getting a taste of what Ocampan puberty was like, Janeway was prepared for the worse, and so was the Doctor.

While she was definitely happy to see Kes in her ready room since it had been so long since the girl had come to her, Janeway wondered what had made her come now.

"Kes," she greeted with a smile.

The Ocampan girl smiled, or at least she tried her best (Janeway already knew whatever this was about it was nothing good; she had come to know Kes well enough to know her expressions).

"What is it?" she asked, hoping the girl didn't have anything really bad to tell her.

Kes's face became grave. "I'm getting impressions from the aliens," she said grimly, "it's just….flashes, but they're clear enough; the images and the emotions that accompany them."

On the word flashes Janeway had been sure that was bad enough, but now she knew it wasn't.

Kes sighed when she saw the expression on Janeway's face. She had known that she had needed to report this, but she knew also that Voyager just wasn't in a state to take on anything at the moment.

"I don't think they know we're here," she went on, trying to be as reassuring as she could be under the circumstances, but the images kept coming to her all the time, and it was getting harder for her to concentrate. "I think they're letting their thoughts bleed out."

Janeway wasn't sure what to say. "What are the images about?" she asked instead, wondering if she could get Tuvok to spend a few moments with Kes to help her, though she wasn't sure if that was going to be any good in the long run.

"They're launching attacks against the Borg," Kes's eyes were grim, sympathetic; like everyone in the Delta Quadrant she had grown up hearing stories about the collective and what they'd done to many along with stories from the Voyager crew themselves. But back home, the Ocampans had been protected by the Caretaker, but even his coddling influence could not hide stories like the Borg.

Neelix hadn't helped. As a Talaxian who had travelled widely through the quadrant, he would have heard all kinds of stories about the atrocities the collective had committed. But that didn't mean she couldn't feel sorry for the people the drones had once been.

Janeway could understand her compassion, though she knew she would be only one of a small minority in the Federation; the Borg had been responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Federation citizens, people with families, lives, and friends. "How bad?" she whispered.

"Worse than what we've seen so far. They've already destroyed several of the Borg's planets, destroyed hundreds of their ships…. I haven't got all of the details, they are aware of me and they're doing their best to stop me picking up too much, but some of it is still bleeding out… But I've been picking up on their emotions as well," Kes went on, her expression looking like she wanted nothing more than to be violently sick but had far too much to do.

Janeway licked her lips in dread. She hadn't gotten a good vibe off of Species 8472; the savage way that particular member had injured Harry, the way they had destroyed a Borg planet, the destruction they had seen, but it was what Kes had personally experienced and felt off of them that had done more to make her sick. "What is it?" she whispered.

"Pleasure….. glee at seeing their enemy being slaughtered," Kes said, her eyes filling with tears at feeling those particular emotions being felt in such context.

* * *

Chakotay listened with barely concealed worry as Kathryn told him about what Kes had felt, and he was thanking the spirits of his tribe he had never been born with telepathy. Heaven alone knew how Kes was coping feeling the telepathic emissions from Species 8472.

When he heard from Kathryn the aliens had purposefully blocked their minds from Kes to stop the girl from feeling their presence or what they were even feeling, Chakotay realised he wasn't completely surprised.

Chakotay was not a Vulcan, but he could see the logic behind the aliens' motives to mask themselves and that it was purely accidental their emotions had 'bled out' for Kes to pick up. He only hoped it didn't go both ways. If the aliens wanted to they could pick up on Kes's own thoughts and they would come here and find Voyager when the ship and crew were at their most vulnerable. The aliens could probably mount a full assault on the planet and use that multiple ship formation as they had at the Borg planet and level this rogue planet without expending much energy.

"What do you think?" Kathryn asked when she studied him after she'd finished.

Chakotay knew this was going to be a hard thing for her to hear, but he knew he would have to tell her. "Does Kes know if the aliens are picking up on her own mind?" he asked.

Kathryn's expression immediately told him that the thought had never registered in her mind. "No, she didn't," she whispered when she realised where his thoughts were taking him. "You think they might try to find us through her?"

Chakotay recognised the rhetorical question when he heard it, but he treated it like it was an actual question. "It's a possibility. Remember they did find us through her when we were at that solar system."

Janeway winced at the reminder, but she also mentally kicked and punched herself for not considering the possibility that Kes could become an unintentional security risk. "I'll have Tuvok find a way to help her block them," she murmured thoughtfully, though she shook her head, "trouble is I'm not sure whether it will do any good. He has been helping her for a while now, and there seems to be little to show for it."

"Don't forget this is telepathy," Chakotay reminded her gently, so she remembered that with telepathic races there was no guarantee and all the laws humanity thought they knew were sometimes wrong. "Kes only found out about the aliens when their memories and their thoughts bled out into space for her to pick up on; if that hadn't happened then we might all be dead long before we came to this planet."

"I know that, Chakotay. But I'm also aware now of the potential dangers; those aliens can level planets, they're capable of destroying Borg cubes with only a few shots. They wouldn't have to expend much effort in destroying Voyager or this rogue planet," Janeway said.

Chakotay sighed mentally, knowing he had panicked her now. "Do you think we should launch a shuttle into orbit and use the planet's magnetic fields to mask them, that way we can keep watch?"

Janeway mulled it over in her mind before she agreed to it. The plan was sound enough, and it wouldn't take much effort for them to program the shuttle to keep in one place as the rogue planet moved, but the problem was they still knew next to nothing about the bio-ships sensor abilities.

In the end, she decided that it made no difference. Even if the shuttle detected a bio-ship only a few minutes away, they could still do a great deal in two minutes.

"See to it, but make sure the ship is ready for lift-off," she ordered.

Chakotay blew out a breath knowing the crew were not going to like that, they had been hoping for some long-overdue shore leave for a long time, but he knew it had to be done. "What about the crew?" he asked, deciding to just come out and ask.

Knowing what he was asking, Janeway let out a sigh of her own. She knew precisely what Chakotay was saying, and she hated the thought of depriving her crew of a rest. "Do you think we should tell them about the threat?"

"I don't think we should paint a bullseye on Kes, even if by now the entire crew knows about it. That doesn't give us the right to make things worse."

Janeway nodded, seeing the sense behind it but she also thought it unwise her entire crew didn't know about the danger. "I think we should consult with Kes, find out our options and go from there, but I would like the rest of the crew to experience some form of holiday, brief as it is. We've been on the go for months and it is not fair for them to be promised something after I've taken something from them after B'elanna was stressed out in engineering fixing everything with just having a small amount of help. Could we tell them there's a chance we might all be killed?"

"I think they know that already," Chakotay replied. "Let's speak to Kes, and arrange time between her and Tuvok to help her block the aliens, if its possible, and then we prepare for the worst while giving our people time to enjoy themselves in spite of what's going on."

Janeway looked at him with a smile and she kissed him on the lips. "Thanks," she whispered.

Chakotay smiled back. "No problem."

* * *

As she worked in the aeroponics bay, Kes thought about what the Captain and Commander Chakotay had come to say to her. She understood their caution, of course, but she wished they hadn't expected her to lose her temper because they suddenly distrusted her. In a way it reminded her of the time that warlord Tieran had taken over her body and her mind, it had been an awful time in her life and she had caused a lot of grief, not to mention many deaths. It had taken Kes a long while to adjust to the aftermath. She had lost the trust of a few of the Voyager crew; she still remembered how some of the crew had made it clear to the Doctor they would prefer it if she was no-where near them. It had hurt, but she understood their reasons.

She didn't want the same thing happening again.

She didn't want the crew to lose their trust and confidence in her simply because she was able to pick up on what these new aliens were sending her way.

Like everyone else, she knew the Captain had restricted shore leave on this little rogue planet. The crew were certainly enjoying the chance to experience some real-life fun after spending so long cooped up on board Voyager.

They didn't deserve losing that chance simply because she'd experienced thoughts projected by Species 8472.

Kes also remembered the blow Tieran had caused with her relationship with Neelix, but truthfully it had been on the cards for a while. While she loved Neelix and adored his company, she had been wondering if he was the one for her.

Kes pushed that aside and concentrated on her work, already preparing herself for a round with Tuvok. She closed her eyes and hoped the Vulcans' wisdom and experience would be enough to help her, but the problem with Tuvok was while he was skilled his people had extremely limited telepathic abilities. It made her wish for a Betazoid to help reinforce Tuvok's own aid since Betazoids could project and receive thoughts in much the same way she could.

Putting down her work for a moment, Kes walked around the bay when she realised she wasn't getting anywhere with her work. Kes genuinely hoped she didn't bleed anything out there for the aliens to find. That was why she was welcoming the chance for Tuvok to help her once more.

* * *

On the bridge, Chakotay watched on the view screen as the shuttle left the bay and slowly rose through the atmosphere on its journey through the planet's atmosphere. The shuttle's onboard computer had been programmed to stay above the thermal pockets that kept the planets atmosphere stable without it being sustained within a solar system while shutting down its main engines though the ship would use thrusters and a small output of its impulse engines to remain above the atmosphere. There wouldn't be much point of the shuttle going into space as a temporary lookout if it was suddenly brought down like a stone to crash.

The computers had been programmed to detect transwarp signatures and quantum singularities and the organic material of the bio-ship thanks to those tricorder readings.

As he watched the shuttle rise higher through the atmosphere, Chakotay couldn't help but look around the almost deserted bridge; the few people here were busy working on the exposed consoles whose panels had been removed. Only Tuvok and Harry were operating their consoles monitoring the shuttle.

His thoughts turned onto other matters. First and foremost was his new relationship with Kathryn. It was probably one of the best things that had ever happened to him; he had had his doubts such a thing was possible since she had made it clear she had a fiancé back home even if it was more than likely he had given up hope by now of her coming back.

Chakotay hoped it lasted and that it was better than that brief fling he'd had with Riley Frazier, and the less said about that disastrous mess with Seska, the better.

No, Kathryn was nothing like those two. She was a better person than Seska and she didn't cause pain like Riley had caused, even if the former Borg drone's motives had been purer than Seska's.

Chakotay and she had made plans for the brief shore leave after the ship was repaired and he didn't want to call them off if the shuttle detected anything in the local vicinity. But then again he knew everyone who'd made plans for some time to spend on this planet which was a rarity as it was since the ship travelled from one hostile region to the next with very little time for shore leave in between. If there was a choice between time in some holodeck or breathing in real air, Chakotay would happily state he preferred the opportunity to spend time out in the open.

He had grown up in the open, learnt how to live off of the land, learnt how to hunt and how to survive and live with nature, and although he'd adapted to life in space and in societies who preferred life with technology instead, Chakotay had felt it lacking. He had no regrets about his decision to go into Starfleet though he genuinely wished he'd gone through it without causing problems with his father. When he'd been younger he had been impatient and uncaring about his heritage, but now he was older and wiser and he had seen what the Cardassians had done in the DMZ while the Federation had simply decided to hand over everything there to them on a plate, he wished he could go back in time and spend some time with his father to make it up to him. Vision quests only took him so far.

If he had come to enjoy the time he'd spent on the planet, then the crew were enjoying the chance to enjoy themselves without having to put up with holodeck programs. Sure, most of the crew were writing their own holonovels based on their own interests, and while he was happy about that since, as Kathryn had explained before it became clear that thing with Tuvok's security training program which B'elanna later discovered had been hacked, they were cut off from the Federation and from the Alpha Quadrant where they had no way of accessing new holonovels they could act out.

Sure, Seska's hacking into that security program had caused its own share of problems, but the advantage was it had only made the writers of numerous holonovels now in Voyager's database which had been written by the crew since the destruction of the Caretaker's array double their efforts.

Chakotay remembered the program Tuvok had named "Insurrection Alpha." It hadn't surprised him Tuvok had been worried about the inclusion of Maquis crew members onboard Voyager and that there had been the possibility of a mutiny. The prospects had been present in the early days, and some of the Maquis had caused their own share of problems and issues for the crew; B'elanna breaking Carey's nose and that mess with Dalby and the others where Tuvok had needed to teach them how to become Starfleet officers since they had no-where else to go were small fry compared to those disasters with Suder, Michael Jonas, and Seska.

To this day he didn't understand what had possessed Jonas to contact the Kazon Nistrim and provide information to Seska through them. Jonas had been a Maquis, surely he wasn't blind to think Seska was still Bajoran? Chakotay knew that Jonas had contacted her in the aftermath of that brutal Kazon attack on the ship where Kurt Bendera had been killed. Chakotay closed his eyes as he remembered the good times with his friend. Bendera had been a cast-iron example of a man willing to make the best of any situation, and while many of the Maquis onboard Voyager had problems getting along with some members of the crew, Bendera had not been one of them.

He hadn't seen the point of causing problems. It wouldn't help get them back home. Voyager was more powerful than their destroyed ship and besides as long as he did his best and did the work than they would get home faster.

Bendera had been one of the few Maquis who had given Chakotay a lot of help in making sure there were no problems between their people and the Starfleet crew. It had been Bendera who had made tentative friendships with some of the Starfleet crew. Sure - they hadn't all worked out at first, but it was the effort that counted.

Chakotay shoved those thoughts aside. He turned his attention back to the screen where the shuttle was lifting off through the atmosphere. It was even closer now, and he felt himself tense up. He knew if Species 8472 or the Borg could be close by and they wouldn't know it until it was too late, and by then the ship would be vulnerable. In space, they had the advantage of being able to move. But down here on the planet's surface they were in danger. It would simply take too long for Voyager to lift off from the ground since there were quite a few crew members on the surface of the planet, and when they were taking off through the atmosphere themselves they were not better off.

He had awful visions of the bridge exploding as they'd just taken off from the planet's surface and they were rising, and he honestly hoped that it never happened. The next few minutes could mean the literal difference between life and death.

"The shuttle has cleared the atmosphere, Commander," Harry said, looking up for a moment while he checked his readings, breaking through his thoughts. So far so good, he thought, though he was still tense as the shuttle's sensor readings were passed down to Voyager.

"Good. Make sure it is in continuous contact," Chakotay ordered, moving forward towards the helm console as if he could almost see the shuttle from where they were. But it was too high up for him to see.

"Aye, sir," Harry replied as he got to work.

"I am getting the first sensor scans from the shuttle, Commander," Tuvok announced. "There's nothing within a radius of two light years."

Chakotay nodded, but he wished the shuttle could scan a little further out but the trouble was there was the chance the scan would be picked up by the Borg or by Species 8472. The Borg they could more or less guess was around their level when it came to sensor quality, but Species 8472…. they still did not know, though it was possible they might use Kes to track them down even if Tuvok was going to work with her to block telepathic impulses from the aliens.

"Good, but make sure there is a check ever ten minutes. If there is something out there trying to find us, I want to know about it quickly."

It went unsaid no-one wanted the shuttle to pick up anything while they were here, especially since everyone wanted to take the chance and have a brief break.

* * *

Until the next time...


	6. Chapter 6 The Chases

I don't own Star Trek.

Feedback would be lovely, and I hope you're enjoying this story.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

Janeway ground her teeth together while she wrapped her hands frantically around the armrests of the command chair, shoving her heels against the base of the chairs mount to stop herself from flying forwards as a roar of light blasted through the bridge of her ship, alarms screaming as if taken by surprise by the tremor of the direct hit rocked through the shields right through to the battered frame of the ship.

"Direct hit on the secondary hull," Harry Kim yelped as sparks erupted from his console, but Janeway barely noticed as she focused her attention on the viewscreen. It was set to show the slightly disorientating view of the bio-ship that was currently buzzing around them like a hornet. The bio-ship fired its golden orange beam of energy that zigzagged towards them and impacted against Voyager's shields. The ship rocked with the impact.

"Shields down to 87%," Tuvok reported.

Janeway barely acknowledged the Vulcan's report about the shield strength. Granted she would have preferred it if Tuvok, Harry and B'elanna had spent a few more days working on the shield generators to withstand the energy beams the bio-ships fired with such power they were capable of overwhelming the shields of a Borg cube. Their time on the rogue planet had allowed the three of them to do quite a bit of work on the shields and the rest of the defence systems, but their time was split. B'elanna had more than enough on her plate as it was since as the chief engineer she had a vast amount to do, so her time working on the shields was limited. Janeway was just happy with their current modifications if it meant the warp engines weren't targeted again….

The ship rocked again harder this time as the alien ship fired once more, and Janeway winced as the impact rippled through the ship.

"Damage report?" Chakotay barked with the professional experience of a man who'd endured this type of thing so many times in his life and had lived to tell the tale.

"Direct hit to our secondary hull, commander. Shields are down to 85%," Tuvok answered him.

Janeway turned her head so she could see her old friend at the tactical station before she turned to face Tom Paris's back who was currently working hard on putting some distance between themselves and the bio-ship. She didn't bother telling him to go faster since the ship was already travelling at their current maximum warp speed since the work B'elanna had done with the warp core matrix had taken a great deal of their speed away thanks to the damage to the bio-neural systems and the refitting of parts not even designed for the Intrepid-class.

Even from where she was, unable to see Tom's face, she knew better than to tell him to do his best and put some distance between them and the bio-ship.

It was typical, really. They had lifted off of the rogue planet three days ago and they had resumed their course out of Borg space. Janeway had decided to reuse the Maquis camouflage trick, slowing down the ship and letting out ionising radiation whenever they detected a Borg or a bio-ship, though their earlier encounters were almost non-existent. It was as though both the collective and their enemies had been so focused on each other they couldn't afford to spend too much of their time coming after them.

Until now. Janeway doubted she would ever figure out just how the aliens were able to detect them so effortlessly they could just mount a surprise attack like this, but this fight had been going on for over seven minutes now, and she was frightened the attack would undo all the hard work she and the rest of the crew had put into repairing Voyager. She was also frightened the attack could see the death of more than a quarter of her crew (No, I will not think of that, she stopped herself from fully letting that thought materialise in her mind).

"They're firing again, this time they're aiming for our port impulse engine!" Tuvok warning broke through her thoughts.

"Tom!" Janeway shouted; the aliens had already stranded them once already, it couldn't happen again.

"Taking evasive action!" Paris's hands worked the helm controls like a piano maestro and Janeway was almost thrown out of her seat when the ship pitched and rolled sharply before the inertial dampeners kicked in.

"Are they still making it difficult for you to get a lock on them?" Chakotay asked the Vulcan when Tom righted the ship a moment later as he stabbed hopelessly at the controls separating him and her; she wondered for a moment what he was trying to do, but she decided it made no difference.

"Yes. I'm trying to detect them via their wake, but they have somehow created a subspace field which is obscuring our sensors," Tuvok replied as he stabbed at the controls of his console with the air of someone who was getting very frustrated. Janeway swallowed and quickly averted her eyes, knowing and understanding enough about Vulcans and Tuvok to know her old friend would be embarrassed at the very notion of their losing their control over their emotions.

She wouldn't be surprised if Tuvok was becoming frustrated. They already knew about the strange dampening field the bio-ship was putting out so Chakotay's question was rhetorical and unnecessary but he was probably trying to find out if Tuvok had found a way of getting a lock on them yet.

The dampening field was a new and unwelcome twist, and Janeway couldn't help but wonder why the aliens had not used it before during their previous encounters. It did make her wonder if the aliens had become more innovative in the war effort, and they decided to make things harder for the collective. And for them, she privately added. For a horrible moment, Janeway wondered if Species 8472 had homed in on thanks to their strange telepathic connection with Kes, but she pushed that aside. This was not the time to second guess the girl, not in the middle of a fight though she filed the thought away just in case, though she did find it odd the aliens had decided to use a dampening field to make life difficult for them to fight back.

The ship rocked again with the new impact.

"Shields down to 82%," Tuvok reported.

Listening to the report as the newly enhanced shields continued to drop made Janeway angry. Despite all the repairs they'd done, all the work they'd endured, the aliens still wanted more. They had shielded their ship so then they couldn't be hit by the nanoprobe weapon and she didn't doubt for a moment the bio-ship would keep firing until Voyager was destroyed, fulfilling Kes's vision of the collective being destroyed and Voyager with them while the galaxy was purged of all life. Janeway had met and heard of numerous xenophobic races in her career, but she had never met one this destructive before, but out here, far from Starfleet and the Federation they were hopeless and they were losing resources all the time.

"Tuvok, can we fire a high yield photon torpedo, so we don't have to actually hit the bio-ship, but detonate it close by?" she asked.

"No, the subspace field would interfere with the torpedo guidance and propulsion systems," Tuvok said, though if he noticed or even heard Janeway's hissing sigh of frustration, he gave no sign.

"Bridge to Torres," Chakotay tapped his comm badge.

" _Torres here_ ," B'elanna's voice came over the line, and she sounded both haggard and frustrated; Janeway couldn't blame her, especially after all the work the Klingon engineer had needed to do to get the ship working again. " _This better be brief; I'm trying to keep the warp core online_."

"Is there any way of breaking through the subspace field jamming our sensors and getting a lock on the bio-ship, B'elanna?" Chakotay got out before the chief engineer could deliver a litany of damage.

" _I was thinking of generating a subspace ripple using our deflector and our warp nacelles that would act like echolocation, but I haven't had the chance to really do it; the subspace field is causing problems down here with our warp core as it is_."

That was the news. Janeway sat up straight even as the ship rocked again. "When did this happen?"

" _Just now. I don't think the bio-ships are really adjusted to subspace in our reality. I don't know why. Their field strength is becoming stronger or weaker like they're having trouble holding it in place_."

Janeway paused as she thought about what B'elanna had just said. They knew the bio-ships were capable of travelling at warp speeds, quite high, but they knew so little about their limitations. Janeway guessed the aliens own home realm had its own form of subspace, otherwise, they would never have been able to adapt so well to the real universe.

Or had they?

Were their bio-ships only able to travel at warp and sustain a subspace field for short periods only? Could they do both? No, she quickly realised. They were travelling at warp now and yet they were able to maintain the subspace field, but the pilot was forced to constantly adjust the field. Voyager was able to create additional subspace fields when they were travelling at warp, but they never needed to adjust them like this. Leaning back in her seat Janeway and Chakotay monitored the sensor readings.

There.

She could see it now. The warp field of the bio-ship was having trouble interfacing with the subspace field Species 8472 was using to stop them from getting a positive lock.

"B'elanna, is there any way you can set up the subspace ripple you described?" she asked, mentally going with Torres' name for the tactic.

" _I'll do my best, but my time is being split between making sure the engines are still functional and making sure my engineering crew get their orders_."

"Do what you can," Janeway said, hoping B'elanna caught the understanding tone in her voice before she closed the connection. "Tom, let's see if we can put some more distance between the bio-ship and us. I've got a feeling the bio-ship can't take being in our universe too long."

"I'll do my best," Tom said as his hands went over the relevant controls on his console to increase speed to Voyager's engines. "We are now passing warp six….. six point five… warp seven… warp eight."

Janeway leaned back in her chair and she checked the aft sensor readings. "I knew it," she whispered.

"Knew what?"

"The aliens must be having trouble adjusting to our subspace, so they can only spend a limited amount of time in our universe," Janeway explained, looking up at her boyfriend with a smirk. "Look at it. They're having trouble catching up with us. They're only travelling at warp seven. They're trying to build up speed but its very slow."

Chakotay studied the readings for himself. "I see what you mean. According to our long-range scans, the bio-ship is having to push a lot more of its power into its warp engine, creating a more powerful subspace wake."

" _Torres to Bridge_."

"Go ahead B'elanna. Have you noticed what the bio-ship is doing as we increase speed?" Janeway asked while hoping her desperation was not showing; she didn't want to come all this way to discover something only for her hopes to be dashed….

" _Yes, captain. I have. I've just tried to lock on with the transporter even through our shields as a test, and there was only a small lock. I don't know what good it would do for the tactical lock. Captain, I think we should increase our speed; if we can keep this up then we can fire a torpedo without creating the subspace ripple_."

"Tom, increase speed to warp 9," Janeway ordered.

"Aye, captain."

" _It's still there, captain_ ," B'elanna reported. " _They're increasing the subspace distortion while trying to keep up with us_."

Janeway looked up at Tuvok and she was pleased to see the Vulcan was hard at work. "I have a lock," he reported.

"Fire."

On the viewscreen, they saw the torpedo streak towards the bio-ship which was lagging behind them. The bio-ship tried to fire on the torpedo, but the beam missed and the torpedo struck the bio-ship right in the centre. A few moments later it exploded.

Janeway closed her eyes with relief. "Well done, B'elanna, Tom, Tuvok," she said gratefully. "We've now got a new tactic to use against the aliens. All we need to do is just increase our speed and they'll lag behind. Tom, reduce our speed to warp-."

"Captain, I'm picking up a transwarp signature. It's a Borg cube. It's just come into sensor range," Harry interrupted, his face turning a watery yellow. "It's coming straight for us."

Janeway closed her eyes again, this time with tired annoyance as Harry's need to state the obvious. If there was one thing she had learnt during her time as the captain of this ship it was nearly everything was going to come to them, but she bit her tongue for the time being. It was unfair to Harry even though it would be good to lash out at something or someone. "Let's see it," she growled with impressive patience.

The screen jumped again, this time showing the dark grey form of the cube with its green running lights that streaked across the different points on its hull like lines of electrical light you saw lit up in a city at night on Earth. Hardly a nice comparison since the Borg would like nothing better than to "improve the quality of life" for Earth, though the assimilated Jean-Luc Picard had missed out the fact no-one wanted to lose what they had.

But as she looked at the cube, she could see something was not quite right with the cube and then she realised that the ship was heavily damaged, and they were parts of its hull that were practically gouged open and exposed to space.

"Looks like they've been through a fight," Chakotay commented.

Janeway nodded.

"The cube has extensive damage to its outer hull," Tuvok reported as he conducted a deep scan of the ship that was now taking the bio-ships place in chasing them, "the energy signature is consistent with Species 8472. The cube is regenerating, but it is failing in places."

The crew had seen the destruction wrought on that armada of fifteen cubes that had been caused seemingly by a single bio-ship, though Janeway was unsure if the armada had been attacked by a whole squadron of bio-ships and there had been others attached to the sides of the remaining cubes that hadn't been seen as a number of vicious ticks.

When Starfleet had learnt of the regenerative abilities of the Borg and their cubes, how they adapted to the weapons of anyone unlucky enough to encounter them, they had gone to a lot of trouble to improve their own defences…. only for it all to go pear-shaped when that single cube destroyed most of the fleet at Wolf 359.

Nothing had worked.

I wonder how they're able to inflict so much damage to the cubes and slow down their regenerative process, Janeway thought to herself, guessing that Species 8472's weapons had some sort of effect similar to a disruptor with an anticoagulant component that stopped the victim from recovering without medical aid.

"Do we still have enough life in our warp engines, Tom?" Chakotay's question broke through her thoughts and she instantly snapped out of them. She sometimes hated the fact her scientific curiosity got the better of her.

Tom was instantly checking the helm, getting ready for a long spell at warp. "We'll soon find out," he replied.

"Engage, warp 9. Try to put some distance between us, but try to find a nebula or a solar system we can lose them," Janeway ordered as she and Chakotay walked back to their command chairs.

"Aye, captain," Tom replied as he got to work, though they all knew the chances of finding something they could use to hide was limited.

Janeway wanted to wake up from the nightmare they were living through as Tuvok reported the cube was chasing after them much as the bio-ship had done. The Borg and Species 8472, she mused to herself darkly, two powerful races, both determined and relentless. I was mad to come into this mess.

"Captain, the cube is hailing us," Harry spoke when the ops console chirped with the hailing alarm.

"Let's hear it," Chakotay ordered.

"WE ARE THE BORG. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. RESISTANCE IS-," the speakers boomed with the echoing voice of the Borg collective, but Janeway refused to listen to the rest of the blood-chilling sound of the voice.

"TURN IT OFF!" she shrieked, surprising everyone including herself but she didn't notice. She was furious because the threat of assimilation had gotten to her.

It took her a moment to calm down but when she did, Janeway turned her attention to Tom Paris, who had glanced back at her startled when she'd yelled, but now he turned back. "Tom, please say there is something ahead of us we can use," she said, not really caring if she sounded like she was begging.

"There is a solar system three light years ahead," Tom reported after he'd checked his forward navigational scanners.

"Captain, I'm picking up Borg life signs ahead," Tuvok warned, "the collective might send ships to intercept us."

Janeway closed her eyes as she mentally tried to arrange her thoughts, but she was tired of this mess lurching from one crisis to the next. "Scan the sun," she ordered as she prayed there might be something there they could use. "Is there anything remarkable about it we can use?"

"Its just a regular star, captain. But there is a large magnetic instability we're picking up as we get closer," Harry said.

Janeway smiled as an idea came to mind. It was risky, but it might just work to get them out of this mess.

* * *

Until the next time.


	7. Chapter 7 Taking the steps to survive

Disclaimer - I don't own Star Trek Voyager.

Please leave feedback.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

When he noticed the smile on Kathryn's face, Chakotay realised she had an idea in her mind, but he had no idea if the idea passing through her mind was a good one or a bad one. As he looked at her beautiful face, Chakotay wondered what she planned to do. He had noticed that ever since he had met her, she was definitely smart enough to twist any situation to their advantage. It looked like this situation would go the same way.

Ever since the pair of them had become lovers, probably one of the best moments in his life. Chakotay had always treated the women in his life with respect and decency, and even when he had first met Kathryn during that mess with the Kazon and the Caretaker when the powerful alien, and she had surprised him by suggesting an alliance to help one another instead of being at each other's throats though he'd been surprised because a fleeter was being generous, he had treated Janeway with guarded respect.

But now things were different. He had come to know her, and although she had come across him at first as a typical, rule-abiding Starfleet officer, he had quickly learnt she was quick on her feet, but it was rare when he had an idea that made sense. Something about the star up ahead had inspired something in her.

It only took Chakotay a moment to guess what it was...

"What do you have in mind?" he asked, curiously; he might have his own theories about what his lover had in mind, but no-one ever said Kathryn Janeway sometimes made sense.

But Janeway turned her attention straight to Tom. "Mr Paris, alter your heading. Take us to the star, but head close to the magnetic instability."

Paris turned around in his seat, his expression tired but still alert. He gazed at his captain with tired surprise, but before he could ask what she had in mind, but one look at her expression made him swivel around in his chair. Chakotay could not blame him, her expression had shifted from a devious smirk to a dangerous glare.

"What do you have in mind?" Chakotay repeated.

Janeway turned to face him. "We're going to bring some sunshine into the Borg's lives," she said before she tapped her comm badge. "Janeway to Torres."

"Torres here."

"B'elanna, we're heading close to the star, towards a magnetic instability. Can you modify the deflector dish to amplify it to destroy the Borg Cube chasing us?" Janeway asked desperately while she mentally calculated how long it would take to modify the deflector dish and whether B'elanna could do it or not.

To her side, Chakotay wasn't particularly surprised by the proposed tactic. As a means of escape, it was risky enough, but against the Borg…

When he was fighting for the Maquis in the DMZ, Chakotay had once led a small group of Cardassian ships into a star, knowing full well the small Maquis ship was incapable of taking on the more powerful Cardassian vessels which had the means of blasting his small ship to pieces.

Desperate, Chakotay had taken his ship close to the star, but his ship was not powerful enough to use Janeway's current tactic. Instead, he had simply made it look like his ship was drifting close to the star while attempting a low power slingshot around the sun. The Cardassians had fallen for it, and he had engaged the warp engines and dragged a large chunk of solar matter in his wake. The Cardassian ships had been destroyed in the blast.

Chakotay had little idea if the tactic would be enough against the Borg Cube. But it was the only one they had.

A sigh came over the line. "Captain, I could have had a bit more time-," the chief engineer said, but Janeway spoke over her. "I know, but I've just had this idea. Can you do it?"

Another sigh. "I suppose so, captain," B'elanna replied. "But I want to check over the deflector systems. We took quite a lot of damage down here, but I think the deflector should be okay."

Janeway quietly regretted pushing her crew like this, but they had little choice. In the meantime, she looked around the bridge and wasn't surprised when she saw that everyone was surprised by her plan. But Janeway was not in the mood to justify it because she knew it would work. The power of a solar flare was extreme enough at the best of times, but during a battle, it could be used to not just overwhelm the shields of an enemy ship.

It had been used before.

During the Klingon Civil War, a captain of a Bird of Prey in the KDF, named Kurn, had lured two other Birds of Prey loyal to the House of Duras close to a star and had triggered a solar flare when he had gone to warp. The two Klingon ships were both destroyed, but the potential of using a star to destroy an enemy ship was a basic strategy.

Kathryn had read that account of Kurn's strategy by chance. The Klingon Civil War was an easy subject to get information about especially for a high ranking officer like herself. She had read those accounts after the war had ended, and information about the Romulan's aid for the Duras had come out.

But the next time she had heard about a solar flare being used was when the Enterprise had fought against the group of Borg who had retrieved Commander Data's insane and malfunctioning android brother, Lore. The Enterprise had been trying to outrun the more powerful Borg ship, and they had taken refuge near a star. With the Enterprise's metaphasic shielding failing and the hull temperature and the radiation from the star threatening to overwhelm the ship and her crew, the Enterprise was forced to trigger a solar eruption.

The idea was still sound, but her method would be different.

Janeway was shaken out of her thoughts when the comm line chirped. "Torres to bridge," B'elanna's voice came over the line. The moment she heard the other woman speak, Janeway knew she was not going to like what the other woman had to say; she had known B'elanna long enough to know there was bad news.

"What's wrong, B'elanna?" she replied tersely.

"The navigational deflector systems took some damage during the attack. The dish itself is okay, that's not the problem. The problem is if we try this, the deflector could be burnt out. I was afraid of this. But I think I can modify the phasers instead to do the same thing while we go to warp and trigger a solar eruption from there."

Janeway had always been amazed by B'elanna's technical acumen. To be frank she sometimes found it strange the other woman was able to think of things that could get them out of trouble. In truth, B'elanna took what she knew about the crisis going on, and tried to think of a way out of it, but Janeway had a feeling, telling from B'elanna's tone, she knew what she was speaking about due to experience. It wouldn't surprise her in the least if B'elanna during her Maquis days had followed Kurn's tactic. It wasn't a difficult tactic to perform, but Janeway hoped the Borg didn't have countermeasures…

They needed this to work.

"Get it done," she ordered at last and she looked over at Chakotay. She wasn't surprised he looked surprised she was even considering using this type of tactic since she had never used anything like it in the past but knowing it would help them with the Borg.

Sitting down she leaned over the space in between their chairs and whispered, "When did you use this tactic?"

"Years ago, just after the Maquis had been founded. B'elanna and I were part of the same crew. We lured in a small fleet of Cardassian ships into a star's corona, making it look like we were drifting towards it by chance, and then we went to warp. We destroyed the ships," Chakotay replied.

Janeway shrugged her shoulders. Personally she had never liked the Cardassians - rescuing that injured soldier didn't count - but truthfully in a battle like that, she would like to think she would have used whatever dirty tactic she could think of to defeat them, and she was doing it now with an enemy who made the Cardassian Union look like they weren't even trying.

"I hope this works," Janeway replied quietly, but she was overheard by Chakotay.

The Maquis first officer knew from bitter experience many of his new lover's ideas were sometimes badly thought through. Sometimes he wondered if Kathryn even had any idea how her plans would work out while she was trying desperately to get them back home. Sometimes she had come up with plans that were evidence of her ability to think on her feet. The insane plan she had come up with to make the alliance with the Collective was an example, although she had in the past come up with ideas and plans that were better thought out, and they had won through sheer luck.

But ever since the damage Voyager had sustained since that attack where the warp core had been damaged and B'elanna had been forced to practically gut the entire system out for all it was worth in order to get an idea the damage and what urgently needed repairing, he knew Kathryn had been trying to wean herself off of making those insane, rash plans and taking things slowly.

However, this plan was a desperate one. He could hear it with her last words, she was worried that she was going to be responsible for their deaths or their assimilation. Thinking about assimilation made Chakotay shiver, and he knew he was only thinking that way because of everyone in the Alpha Quadrant knew about the Borg's methods into acquiring cultures and technologies, but the idea of everything that made him who he was being torn away from him, his mind being added into a Collective mind, unable to interact or even to think for himself while his body was reduced to a zombie state…. It made him feel ill, and he decided if the Borg did board Voyager, he would kill himself. He would never allow himself to become a drone, especially after experiencing a collective mind when Riley and Orum fitted him with the neural transceiver which they'd placed in his spine so they could heal those injuries he had sustained when he and Kaplan had arrived on that planet. At first, the experience had been amazing since it had allowed him to experience life from the perspective of others, and they had become closer as people… Only for Riley and the other desperate members of the cooperative to foul things up when they'd hijacked him, forced him to shoot B'elanna, and endanger the lives of the crew with a reactivated Borg Cube.

He never wanted to go through that ever again, and he wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Listening to Kathryn whisper that sentence… It was worrying because it showed him she was trying to change her ways, but she was also a bit more with it now since she was likely worried her ideas about how to fight both Species 8472 and the Borg might cause serious damage to Voyager, and it might also result in the loss of a large number of the crew. Kathryn and he had sworn to get their full crew home, and while it was actually impossible to do since they were travelling through space no-one in the Federation had ever reached before, and there would be attacks and aliens would be gunning for them, either for their organs, their technology, or their ship, only a few members of the crew had died - only one or two at a time, though that was nothing compared to just how many lives had been lost since the Caretaker had lassoed them into this godforsaken quadrant where there were no rules and they were on their own.

As they approached the sun, Tom's console chirped in alarm - Chakotay knew that whatever it was the pilot had picked up just now was not going to be good; although he hadn't had the exact best impression of Paris when they had first met, and he had considered him to be nothing more than a waster who was just looking for someone with a large wallet to pay his bar bills and to cover up the debts he was accumulating, he knew Paris was proficient enough to tell when things were not good.

"Captain," Tom said, "I'm picking up three other Borg Cubes, moving right towards us."

"Damn," Kathryn whispered before she asked in a louder voice, "How soon before they come close?"

"We're entering the star's gravitational field now, but the other three Cubes are much further behind our first one," Tom reported, "but they are going to warp one just to catch up. They've used a warp pulse only, they're not travelling in a warp field."

Janeway heard, and ignored, the sounds of gasps around the bridge. There was nothing wrong with going to warp in space, but in a solar system where there was a collection of stellar bodies like planets, moons, and asteroids, it was a problem. Warp travel meant the ship would be travelling at very high speeds, making the chance of a collision extremely likely. There were also the trace elements laden inside asteroid and meteorite dust; the navigational deflector was designed to prevent those dust particles from allowing one of those particles of dust to hit Voyager when travelling at such high speed the impact alone would have enough momentum to punch a hole into the ship.

All Starfleet cadets and anyone who had spent a good portion of their lives working and living out in space quickly learnt of the old stories of how the United Earth starships and cargo vessels which had been launched before Jonathan Archer had sat down with the local races, and formed the beginnings of the Federation, and received some serious damage to their hulls because they had travelled deeper and deeper into the solar system so fast they all suffered some damage. Janeway had lost count of the number of hulls she had seen during her history courses at the Academy with breaches in them caused by grains of dust.

But the biggest risk ships faced when they went to warp inside of a solar system was the gravity of the different bodies. In the vicinity of a planet, the gravity would distort the warp field, though it was possible to use the gravity to slingshot the warp ship away from the gravitational mass of the planet. In busy systems where there would be sub-warp ships moving around, a warp field would destroy anything smaller. For a ship like Cochrane's Phoenix, which had luckily only travelled a few million kilometres away from Earth in order to send up the flare to the Vulcans to spark the journey where Earth would rise out of the ashes of the Third World War, and move into a more peaceful future, it hadn't been a problem; Cochrane had not needed to travel too far away from Earth in order to attract the Vulcans' attention by breaking the light barrier.

But other the years there had been a few accidents, and that had led to more advanced computers to help navigators and pilots ensure they didn't crash into anything that could potentially cause severe damage to the ship.

While it was amazing the Borg were using warp to chase Voyager into the star's corona, Janeway and the others had to admit that the Collective probably knew what they were doing; they had been assimilating and adding similar technologies to their own for so long they were probably able to be more precise with their sensors than Voyager was. The upside was it was clear the Cubes were not taking any chances. They knew they couldn't survive if they crashed into the sun, though they would probably not make such a dangerous mistake.

They're being cautious, Janeway realised to herself. They have either been severely damaged like us, and they're forced to travel slowly, or they don't want to be snagged by the star's gravity.

Either way, she didn't care because Voyager was now close to the star, and they were close to the magnetic instability. "Prepare the phaser," she ordered.

"Aye, captain," Tuvok replied as he got to work.

"Torres to bridge. We're ready now Captain," B'elanna called up; Janeway closed her eyes in relief, delighted by B'elanna's excellent sense of timing.

"Fire when ready," she ordered.

On the viewscreen, which was immediately set up to show the sensor return picked up from the phaser strike against the sun, they watched as the phaser beam lanced the surface of the sun.

"Mr Paris, prepare to go to maximum warp," she said.

"Aye, captain," Tom replied, getting to work at once; from where she was sitting at the command chair, Janeway could clearly see for herself he was setting the destination systems for random, but she wasn't going to say anything. This kind of manoeuvre was tricky enough as it was, and besides, they could alter their course again later. If this worked.

"Mr Tuvok, is the Borg nearby yet?" Janeway asked.

"Scanning…. the Cubes are closing directly behind us, Captain."

"Align our warp field for the instability," Janeway ordered once she'd acknowledged what her friend had just reported, "standby to engage on my mark….. Mark!"

The view screen had been a blend of black from the vista of the local space and the bright yellow-gold from the glare of the sun, but the moment she had given her order, the vista charged as the warp field stretched local space and the subspace layers, and the ship jumped into warp, immediately breaking the warp barrier in a flash of blue-white light.

* * *

The Borg Cubes had been closing on the Starfleet ship as it had headed into the star's gravitational pull. If the Borg were capable of individuality and they had the ability to question, or make guesses, they would have asked themselves or one another what motive the crew of a starship would have in hiding in a star's gravity, or they may have even deduced what the Federation ship they had easily identified as the Intrepid-class ship that had been detected some time ago when its probe had been assimilated by another Cube was trying to do.

Fortunately for the crew of Voyager, the Borg did not bother with questioning the unpredictabilities of emotion or individuality. The Borg, however, was desperate. Their long-range scans had indicated that this ship had somehow managed to attack Species 8472… and prevail.

The Borg were desperate to win in their conflict against the extra-dimensional life form they had unwittingly unleashed upon the galaxy. They were desperate; they were losing a lot of ground, and much of their territory to the aliens. Millions of Borg drones were being destroyed, though the mind of the Collective group mind did not really care about their loss considering the group consciousness would contain all of their experiences forever, so it was irrelevant if their bodies were destroyed in the process. The assimilation of the USS Voyager would allow them to understand what this weapon was, and it would also have an influx of new drones who would add to their own.

However, the Borg Collective was more than aware their ships were heavily damaged. Many of them had barely managed to survive the war as it was, and they were still suffering from severe damage. They went in after Voyager, but their ships were still regenerating; the exotic energy the extra-dimensional aliens used for their beam weapons was incredibly difficult for the Collective to deal with, and the repairs took time.

The Borg were aware Voyager was moving directly over the magnetic instability on the star, but they didn't question it nor could they do anything about it since they were still quite a distance from it and the ship. They were aware of Voyager firing its phaser at the magnetic instability, they couldn't do anything about it, and they didn't question it. When Voyager went to warp over the instability as the phaser beam became even more unstable and it created a solar flare, the Borg Cubes tried to escape but the attempt was futile as the solar flare surged upwards from the instability on the star, destroying the ships instantly after overloading and overwhelming the shields.

* * *

 _"Captain's log:- Stardate 51001.2_

 _We have managed to escape the Borg and Species 8472 on the same day, but the damage the ship has sustained is nothing compared to the threat now posed to us by the Collective. They have almost certainly found out we have a weapon against their new enemy, something they cannot produce. The next time we may not be so lucky. For the time being, I am meeting with the senior staff to decide on ways of preventing destruction… or worse, assimilation as we try to survive out here."_

* * *

Looking around the meeting room table while she sat at the head because she was physically too tired to stand, Janeway was quiet for a moment as she thought about the recent events. Her mind was also fixed on her own log recording. The last attack had made her wise up, made her see the Borg were not only aware of their weapon, but they were going to assimilate them if they caught up with them.

She wasn't sure if she was looking forward to this meeting or not. She didn't like the thought of going over old ground by coming up with plans, but because they hadn't been able to make the old ones work didn't mean anything new wouldn't.

"We have managed to survive both the Borg and Species 8472," she said when she realised she wasn't going to be getting anywhere by thinking about her log and its implications. "I'm open to other options on how we can protect ourselves."

"I've been thinking about that, Captain," Tom said, leaning forward in his chair as he took in the rest of the senior staff, "we could try something like the Crimson Death."

"The what?" Chakotay asked, his brow furrowed in confusion as he looked at Tom with puzzlement in his eyes.

"The Crimson Death. It's a weapon in some 20th-century comics - I can't remember the details, but basically, it showed a kind of alternate timeline where humans on Earth had been more proactive in primitive spaceflight, and missions into the solar system were more of a reality. Anyway, they also encountered aliens, and one of them used something called the Crimson Death. It is basically like acid which works in the vacuum, an atmosphere or in water. When it makes contact with the hull of a ship, it eats away at the hull, and explosive decompression takes care of the rest. I was thinking we could use the same principle of spreading the nanoprobes out into space, let them interact with the outer layers of the bio-ships and let them do the work," Tom explained.

Janeway thought about it, her scientific mind going over the practicalities and the potential drawbacks. "It sounds…interesting, Tom," she admitted slowly, "but how would we spread the nanoprobes around a bio-ship?"

Tom looked down, showing that he hadn't thought about that, but Harry came up with the idea. "What if we put the probes into a small canister, and either blow it out into space with an airlock, or we could transport the canister near a bio-ship."

B'elanna shook her head. "No. The bio-ships move too rapidly. Our transporters wouldn't be able to get a positive lock to beam it close enough."

Harry looked deflated the idea wasn't practical, but then he whispered, "We need something just as strong as an antimatter explosion.

Janeway sighed. "Our problem is while the high-yield weapon works, I don't want to be dependent on just one. I want us to have several other weapons capable of fighting the aliens."

"What?" Chakotay asked as he looked around the room.

But Harry didn't have a clue, but B'elanna did. "A nuclear explosion."

Janeway looked at the chief engineer seriously. "Could we use a nuclear blast to spread the nanoprobes?" she asked, her mind racing as she thought about using the nuclear blast to spread the probes outwards, allowing the nanoprobes to increase in number by converting energy into matter with the same programming changes, but she didn't know just how robust the probes were.

"I think so," B'elanna replied slowly as her own mind raced, "I would need to check the nanoprobes over, see what kind of radiation they are vulnerable too; I doubt the bio-ships would have too many problems in a radioactive environment. They are just as much at home in our universe as well as they are in theirs, and our universe is full of different cosmic radiations. I'll have a look after the meeting."

"Good," Janeway replied, though she wondered how they would be able to create nuclear weapons capable of devastating the Species without them relying on their torpedoes. The problem with creating nuclear weapons was they required special raw materials to set them up, but more than that they were extremely dangerous; if one of them exploded on Voyager, the internal structural integrity system may not be enough to help, and many if not all of the crew would be killed. "But I'm still thinking about Tom's idea, about spreading the nanoprobes around; now I've had some time to think, I think we can use the transporter."

"How?" Tuvok, who had surprisingly silent as he listened asked her curiously. Janeway did wonder why Tuvok was being silent, but she decided to wait until later to figure it out.

"We store them inside canisters like was suggested. But when the bio-ships attack, we beam them as close to the bio-ship as possible, and the canister functions like a mini-transporter and transports the probes close by the ship."

The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. "I think I see the idea," the hologram said, "the moment the canister is close to the bio-ship, it releases the nanoprobes in a cloud, transporting them into space."

"Exactly," Janeway smiled, but then her smile dimmed. "But what about the Borg? I doubt the same trick would work for them."

Tuvok moved in his chair. "Captain, some time ago, Starfleet Security came up with a projectile weapon known as the TR-116. It was designed to operate in energy-dampening fields, or radiogenic environments where an ordinary phaser would not work."

"A projectile weapon?" Harry repeated. "You mean it uses bullets?"

Tuvok looked surprised he needed to even explain the principle since everyone knew about such weapons. "I believe that is what I mean, Ensign," he said, "but the design is in the main computer. We could reproduce it, and modify it to work against the Borg."

"What if they adapt?" Chakotay asked.

Tuvok nodded in agreement. "I understand, but I was thinking of adapting the rifles ourselves with a micro-transporter that would dematerialise the bullets on the firing end, and then they would rematerialise close to the drones before they realised what was going on. I will admit the idea does come with potential drawbacks, but it may just work."

Janeway nodded. Personally, she was uncertain if the idea she had just listened to would actually work against the drones, but she had to admit the idea of using projectile weapons would be something she would need to see for herself. "Alright," she nodded, "assemble a team to research ways of ensuring the bullets to this weapon are not adapted too."

"Aye, captain," Tuvok nodded, his expression making it clear he was busily thinking about how one would go about adapting a hail of bullets against an army of drones without the Borg adapting.

There was not a shred of doubt in Janeway's mind the Borg would try to beam directly onto Voyager. They had just tried to follow them into a star for god's sake, and it was likely they had detected what Voyager had done before that Cube had chased them into the solar system where it was destroyed along with a few of their friends. The Borg Collective knew they had a weapon capable of fighting the aliens they were fighting in a war, so they were probably desperate to assimilate them.

Janeway had no intention of letting that happen to them. She had not spent the last three miserable, hard, but amazing years result in their assimilation. She wanted her crew to survive, and that was why she was holding this meeting in the first place.

The meeting went on for over three hours and in the end, all of the senior officers had come up with some radical ideas for defeating the Borg and Species 8472. Not all of the ideas were entered around weapons and defences, though there were a number of good ones. Harry Kim, in particular, had been thinking about his original, and truly nasty experience on the Cube where he had nearly met his end, and he had asked if maybe they could experiment with some kind of armour that mimicked the immune system of Species 8472 so the Borg would not be able to assimilate them.

The rest of the staff had to admit it was a good idea, and the Doctor promised to help them look into the possibilities.

* * *

In the realm of Fluidic Space, the aliens were telepathically monitoring their forces in normal space. The aliens were delighted with the progress of the war, and the losses the Borg had suffered as a result.

 _"We are nearly ready to implement the plan to shatter the Collective."_

 _"Good. I look forward to hearing the screams, and the confusion of the Collective. What of our invasion plans?"_

 _"We have despatched scouting parties into different parts of the galaxy. One race, known as the Voth, are millions of years older than the Borg. They believe they have proprietary rights over a large portion of this part of the galaxy, but what they think is irrelevant to us since we not 'endotherms' as they refer to warm-blooded races."_

 _"Warm-blooded? What is that?"_

 _"I do not know. It must be some form of stupidity in the other universe."_

 _"When do we begin the attacks on other races?"_

 _"Not until we have dealt with the Borg. We need to focus our efforts on them, and then we can begin finalising our plans. What do our scouts say about the other powers in this galaxy?"_

 _"One portion of the galaxy is controlled by something known as "the Dominion." It is apparently controlled by a race of shapeshifters and is policed by a race of genetically-engineered warriors. We know where the shapeshifting race is located, we can destroy them in one go. Our strategists are currently working on the final plans…"_

* * *

Until the next time...


	8. Chapter 8 Disturbing news about the War

Disclaimer - I don't own Star Trek Voyager or any other Star Trek series out there. I wish I did.

Please drop me a review to let me know what you think.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

 _"Captain's Log: Supplemental._

 _Voyager is still travelling through Borg Space. We have not suffered any new attacks from either the Borg or from Species 8472, and while some of the crew may have been happy about it, I'm worried. What makes it even more annoying is neither side relies upon conventional means of communication; Species 8472 are telepathic according to Kes, and even she has not felt or sensed anything for days, which only makes me worry even more. The Borg rely on their technological telepathic ability to communicate with one another over vast distances, and without being able to tell what's going on out there, we have no idea if we're going to be targeted or not. Meanwhile, the crew are developing new means of fighting both the Borg and Species 8472. Tuvok's has taken a team of from Sciences, Engineering, and Tactical to work on the projectile rifle while using the Doctor's knowledge of the Borg corpse we recovered months ago, and although the simulations hold up so far, there is a fine line between artificial reality and real life. Meanwhile, Tom Paris's "crimson death" idea derived from the 20th-century comic books he enjoys is gathering pace. And all that time we have two high-yield photon torpedoes with the modified nanoprobes prepared for immediate launch, just in case."_

* * *

When he had first made the decision to become a Starfleet officer, Harry Kim had always been inspired by those stories of Jonathan Archer, Robert April, Matt Decker, Christopher Pike, and James T. Kirk, and he had dreamt of being on a starship exploring deep space and even commanding the ship while coming home to a hero's welcome that would put him up there with the heroes of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets.

But now, as he walked through the holographic simulation of Voyager's corridors, which were programmed to show extensive damage to them - bulkheads had been buckled, the artificial gravity was fluctuating to simulate serious damage which was likely to happen considering how much of a death trap the Delta Quadrant was on a good day, Harry Kim wished he had taken stock in the old expression; "Be careful what you wish for, you may get it."

Now he and a small group of the crew - the simulations were compulsory, every member of the crew had to take part - were walking through darkened corridors of the simulation to test the new weapons and countermeasures B'elanna and Tuvok had come up with, with some help from the Doctor and other members of the crew who had the experience or the ideas to make it work, but Harry had no doubt in his mind their hearts were pounding in their chests, his was.

Harry looked down at his tricorder - the device had been programmed to work in this holographic program, and it was picking up their quarry - and he lifted his head to look at the detachment through the viewing plate of his armoured suit. _It's almost unbelievable_ , he thought to himself, _we've not had to use full-body armour for decades, and now here I am, as a 24th-century knight of the Round table!_

The armoured suits were a recent addition to Voyager's armoury, and they were designed to resist the cybernetically enhanced strength of the Borg drones, though how much they could take from Species 8472 with their enormous forms and lightning quick reflexes, Harry did not know, but he was dreading the prospect of once more being struck in the chest like someone had waved a particularly sharp Klingon _mek'leth_ at his chest. He shuddered, thankful his armour stopped anyone from seeing his fear of once more being infected, but he was glad neither B'elanna or Tuvok were arrogant enough to think the armour was going to be the end-all of their hopes to protect themselves.

But as he walked through the simulated corridors with his detachment, hefting up his rifle - the TR-116 rifle was completely different from the phaser rifles he had used in the past, either when he had been training at the academy during those numerous tactical training sessions or when he had joined the Voyager crew, but this rifle was different, it was slimmer and in some ways it felt like he was holding a flute instead of his beloved clarinet - Harry couldn't help but think.

In the last three weeks since the captain had made her announcement they needed to rethink Voyager's defence strategy, many of the crew had come forward including the Doctor when the hologram had thought about using the nanoprobe technology of the Borg to prevent assimilation, but while she had been willing to give the premise a chance, B'elanna had taken extra steps to make sure there was a lot more on offer to prevent any of their people from becoming mindless automatons. B'elanna was an engineer, the doctor was a, well he was a doctor, with the mindset of a physician but while the Doctor's program was flexible enough to make him think and see outside of the box enough for him to come up with fantastic ideas, there was only so much that he could do, though Harry would be forever thankful to the Doctor for coming up with the idea of reprogramming the nanoprobes to destroy the infection Species 8472 had inflicted on him.

B'elanna had taken some of the nanoprobes and she had studied their technology, and she had learnt they were vulnerable to omicron particles. Once she had made the discovery, she and Tuvok had tried to work out ways of using that knowledge to prevent the Borg from assimilating them. They had thought of simply inoculating their people with omicron particles or finding some ways of generating a field of omicron energy to render the probes useless before assimilation could even take place. The bad news with that idea was omicron particles were dangerous in enormous doses, but B'elanna and her team had not given up. And then someone had come up with the idea of building a kind of tactical armour that had a kind of immune system that generated a low-level omicron field around their bodies, but if the Borg tried to assimilate them the suit would detect it and the computer was programmed to generate a massive surge of omicron energy to combat the nanoprobes.

The hard part was the suits were rather bulky. They had been assembled in a hurry using the minerals taken from an asteroid belt; after the captain had come up with the rather mad idea to develop nuclear weapons, of all things, B'elanna had used the opportunity to get her hands on enough material to create the armour, which was composed of layers. The outer layer was composed of a composite with a layer underneath where an omicron field was located near a forcefield generator - the Borg, B'elanna had reasoned, cheated with their ability to adapt, so why shouldn't they do the same? - followed by two other layers. Harry was thankful her friend had thought about using cybernetics to make these suits essentially exoskeletal in nature; they augmented their user's endurance and physical skills. The drawback was they were bulky and made him feel like he was a giant.

The suits were essentially robotic, and Harry wondered if B'elanna was using her experience with the Pralor robots they'd encountered two years before for inspiration for some of the robotics since the experience had given B'elanna a load of insight into robotics you wouldn't learn in the Federation or in the Maquis.

Harry studied the tricorder again before he nodded, and became tense. None of the rest of the detachment could see it, of course, but he still became worried. "It's done this corridor," he spoke through the comm channel the suits were designed to work with, "ready your weapons."

As he watched the detachment clumsily release the safety on their weapons - it was a motley collection of regenerative phasers and projectile weapons that Harry himself was using - Harry was thankful B'elanna and Tuvok had plans on improving the suits. They were collecting a huge amount of useful information about them with each simulation, and the engineering crew were constantly modifying the design so then it would be perfect for use against the Borg and Species 8472.

But Harry had his doubts and his concerns. There was simulated reality and there was real life, after all; the program was as good as it was going to get, and while Starfleet had some good experience with the collective after the first encounter when Q had flung the Enterprise into the path of that original cube, to the massacre at Wolf 359, and the band of Borg the deranged android Lore had commanded to work with, they still didn't have a lot of experience with the Borg to know what they were capable of in a fight.

He just wasn't sure if the armour would really work out in the long term in a practical fight, still, it was a good idea, and if he were honest with himself he would rather be protected than exposed to the open as he had been on that cube that had been hanging on by scaffolding.

"Come on," Harry said, and he led the way down the corridor slowly, ignoring the sparks from the simulated damaged conduits and the flickering lights, and the green glare of plasma fires. The gloom of the corridor and the dim lighting made it easier for their quarry to hide. Harry sighed under his breath; the hand beacons mounted on the composite alloy gauntlets of the armour couldn't cover a lot of ground, and besides their quarry had been programmed to make this as difficult as it could possibly get.

"Keep it tight," Harry added in a whisper as though frightened what lurked in this simulation could overhear him and sense his fear, "this thing is fast. Keep it calm, and keep your weapons ready at all times." He lifted his own rifle and flexed his fingers over the silver body, following his own advice to the letter as he slowly led the team through the maze of corridors.

Suddenly out of nowhere, the massive form of one of the extra-dimensional aliens appeared out of nowhere in front of Harry who was so taken by surprise he almost fell, but he was relieved when he didn't, the hand beacon picking out the shape of the holographic version of the alien that had attacked him, but one of the detachment behind him shone their own light past the creature and found two more.

Harry didn't hesitate. "Fire!" he yelled, lifting up his rifle while the others did the same.

The members who had the regenerative phasers fired their own shots at one of the creatures, and the creature shrieked with pain and rage, but the force of the energy beams which were laced with modified Borg nanotechnology, and the way the probes attacked the creature's body made it crumble under the stress and it died. Meanwhile, Harry squeezed the trigger on his rifle and fired off round after round. When he had been younger, Harry had studied human history and technology, and while he had a rather inflated view about how wonderful the Federation was to the point where it occasionally caused friction between him and his Maquis crewmates, he knew enough history to know there was a large bang when projectile weapons were fired.

Not this one.

The bullets were fired, yes, but the rifles had been modified so they featured a micro-transporter that passed through matter. It didn't take long, even in the gloom of the corridor and the limited glare of their lights, the team could see the effects instantly; the skin of the aliens began to turn ashen grey in colour, and they began getting physically weaker and weaker before they collapsed. Harry had to admit to himself it was a fairly dramatic idea of what everyone thought would happen if the individual aliens and not their ships were exposed to the probes, though he didn't know if they'd shrivel up, become a pile of dust like a vampire exposed to sunlight or turn to stone like a gorgon had stared at them.

* * *

Janeway and the rest of the senior staff were reviewing the numerous simulations that had been going on non-stop. As she and the others of the command staff watched the briefing room monitor, they saw the numerous simulations one after another as the crew faced off against the holographic Borg and members of the extra-dimensional species.

As she watched the monitor, Janeway wasn't sure how she should be feeling. On the one hand, she was pleased with the ingenuity B'elanna and Tuvok had shown when they'd come up with the armour, and she was just relieved her crew were well trained enough to meet and fight the odds, but on the other side….

Armour. Projectile weapons. This was basically a scene out of Earth's history virtually every human had put behind them for years, but she had to admit the armour was practical in this case especially after the crew had discovered the Borg's assimilation technology was vulnerable to omicron radiation, and besides after Harry had been infected with the aliens' DNA which had nearly eaten him from the inside out and killed him, Janeway had no intention of seeing the other members of her crew go through the same hell again; the Doctor may have devised a treatment, but when the armour idea had been pitched, she'd realised she had had enough of her crew being injured.

When the simulation replay ended, Janeway took a moment to gather her thoughts. "Alright, I know for many of the crew, the idea of wearing powered armour must have been difficult, but the simulations say the suits were highly effective," she said, "now we need to know the risk. Doctor?"

"I'm looking into the long-term protections of using the omicron particles, Captain," the holographic doctor began, not sounding particularly happy with the need to use a dangerous radioactive element to protect themselves from the Borg, though Janeway could hardly say she liked it any more than the hologram did, "however with the right inoculations there do not seem to be any risks despite the toxicity. I am also trying to find out if there are any other means of preventing assimilation, and my research is going into modifying nanoprobes, however, my work is still in its early stages."

"Keep at it," Janeway told the hologram before she turned to B'elanna. "What about our plan to use our transporters to beam torpedoes and nuclear bombs directly into the bioships?"

"It's going slowly," B'elanna replied, giving a tired smile; Janeway knew how she felt. She had put in a lot of hours going over the numerous means given to her to come up with plans to fight both the Borg and Species 8472, moving from project to project, on top of maintaining Voyager's systems. "The trick is adapting the transporters to transport the bombs close or inside the fast moving objects while doing it multiple times. We're also having to strip out most of the torpedo arrays to fit the new transporters, but we're close to finishing up."

"Keep me informed. I want to begin tests as soon as you're ready," Janeway said, knowing from long experience applying time pressure to B'elanna's work would not help the temperamental woman. The engineering staff had a lot on their plate, she didn't want to make things even harder for them, and she owed them a great deal.

B'elanna nodded, "Aye, Captain."

Janeway turned to Tuvok. "Where are we with the new weapons?"

"The new projectile rifles are certainly exceeding projections on the holodecks," Tuvok reported, though thanks to her long association and friendship with the Vulcan, Janeway could tell he was troubled by something, "however we still lack any first-hand knowledge of Borg adaptation technology."

"I think I can help you there," the Doctor suddenly interrupted, and everyone looked at the hologram questioningly. The Doctor's excitement dimmed slightly when everyone's attention shifted over to himself, realising he had spoken a bit too loudly, but the holographic physician quickly regathered his confidence. "I have been studying the data I've gathered from the Borg corpse and from the tricorder readings taken when the away team boarded that damaged cube. I think I can modify the rifles to match the Borg's forcefield frequencies so the bullets can penetrate them, and kill the drones."

Janeway noticed that as he said the last bit in a more subdued manner, and she needed a moment to recall the Doctor's Hippocratic oath was a major part of his programming though he knew that occasionally that particular rule had to be occasionally bent because sometimes it was necessary to destroy rather than to save.

She also noticed while he wasn't happy about the way he was casually speaking about killing Borg drones, he was aware it was virtually impossible to save them since they'd been wired into the collective consciousness of the Borg.

Janeway wished no-one would have to kill the Borg considering they were made up of victims sucked in forcibly by the collective who had battered down their former homes, their ships, destroyed their peoples and their lives, but she also had to accept the fact death might actually be seen as their release.

"That's great, Doctor," Chakotay's voice broke through her thoughts, and Janeway wondered just how long she had been silent. Embarrassed, she paid more attention to the conversation as Chakotay went on, "when will you do this?"

"I will need to work with Lieutenants Torres and Tuvok, but I think we can modify the rifles very quickly," the Doctor replied.

"Good," Janeway said, racking her brain now for something else they needed to cover. She found it fairly quickly. "What about the nuclear weapons themselves?"

An air of sudden unease fell over the table at the change in subject. Janeway couldn't blame them. Nuclear weapons had once brought the human race to its lowest ebb, after decades of peace caused by the awareness of what a full-on nuclear holocaust after the Second World War which saw the destruction of two Japanese cities, and the contamination caused by accidents that took place at later dates - Chernobyl sprang to mind, however she was also aware of the testing of nuclear weapons which spread radioactivity into the Earth's atmosphere. Humanity had known the dangers of nuclear war since the 1940s and harm the effects of radiation could have on organic matter - cancers, birth defects, health problems, death, the destruction of cities… And they still used them in the long-term, and the Earth was so battered down, six hundred million people dead, it was a miracle anyone managed to survive before Cochrane broke the warp barrier that changed the entirety of human history, and for the better.

Janeway was aware thanks to the compulsory history lessons she had taken in the past and her long association with Tuvok which had given her insights into Vulcan history as well that the Vulcans had used nuclear weapons themselves before Surak appeared, and the Time of Awakening took place which solidified the logicians philosophy of peace, but the damage to Vulcan was many times greater than what had taken place on Earth.

Through their savagery and intense emotions, Vulcan civilisation was nearly destroyed, their planet was devastated and many parts of the planet contaminated by radiation, conditions were so bad for the Vulcan people they needed 1,500 years to rebuild and clean up their world, use their new reason to develop their culture, open up new resources on their world, and discover the secrets of science which allowed them to eventually become an interstellar power.

Many people and races, Janeway knew, were flabbergasted and horrified when they heard what humanity had done to their planet, the only world they had, the one they lived on and needed to survive, and recklessly poisoned it. Janeway agreed with them and even envied those same races, but she was also proud because, without that war, there was a good chance First Contact would never have happened, but still she could understand the unease in the room at the thought of using nuclear weapons, devices which were, by Federation scientific standards, obsolete.

To her credit B'elanna looked almost at ease at the thought of constructing the weapons, however, there was something that looked like a tinge of unease like the half Klingon looked like she was feeling sick at something but didn't have the time, "It's going slowly. Our first batch should be ready soon.

"Alright, good," Janeway replied before she turned to Harry Kim, but before she could say anything the familiar background hum of the warp engines suddenly gave out.

"Janeway to the bridge," the urgent voice of Tom Paris who had been left in command of the bridge temporarily while the staff meeting had been taking place came over the comm. At the sound of the urgent command and the sudden dropping of warp, Janeway was on her feet and heading straight for the bridge, the rest of the senior staff following her out.

The moment she crossed the threshold and saw what was on the viewscreen, the immediate question on Janeway's lips died when she caught sight of the number of Species 8472's dart-like bio-ships which were surrounding Voyager.

"They appeared out of no-where a few seconds ago while we were travelling at warp," Tom explained, "there was no quantum singularity, no warning. Nothing. The moment they appeared, our warp field suddenly shut down like it wasn't even there"

The scientist in Janeway momentarily wondered how the bio-ships were able to do that. Did they have some way of hiding in subspace, was that how they had managed to appear without the sensors picking them up, though the cloaking devices used by the Voth, the Klingons and the Romulans worked by bending light…. but she quickly pushed that aside - it wasn't exactly the time to make guesses, and besides, it wasn't likely the aliens would tell them how they'd done it. What mattered now was they were far from ready against this many ships.

"How many ships are there, Tuvok?" she asked the Vulcan, who'd quickly retaken his console, acknowledging Tom's brisk report over what happened as she did so he could resume his station.

"I am picking up thirty-two bio-ships, Captain," Tuvok's unemotional voice was calm and steady, but his concern over what could happen was broadcasted clearly to everyone on the bridge. "They are also generating a dampening field which is obscuring our sensors. If they fire, we will not be able to retaliate."

Thirty-two? Janeway thought, studying the screen quickly for inspiration over what they could do about it while the inclusion of the dampening field was even more frightening. The torpedo tubes B'elanna, Tuvok and Harry had been modifying with the transporters were far from ready. She had been keeping abreast with what they'd been doing recently with the transporters, and so she knew the whole system was a complete shambles there was no doubt in her mind it would take time for B'elanna to get it sorted out in time, and besides a lot could happen in a few moments, especially with this many ships surrounding them in such a tight formation that made it very difficult for them to move.

"What are they waiting for?" she overheard Harry whisper, though the ensign's voice carried, she didn't rebuke him for speaking out like that, because the question was a fair one, and it was on her own mind.

* * *

On their ships in the formation, the aliens were currently in mental communication with the rest of their kindred as they carried out the final assaults on the Borg which would completely weaken the hold the Queen had over them before they made their next move. They were able to multitask between monitoring their ships, coaxing and encouraging them to carry out their assignments, observing their enemies while they remained in communication contact with their race in their home realm.

In the weeks since their first encounter with this small, seemingly insignificant ship with its primitive, inferior crew, their kind had suffered casualties caused by this one ship, which was a surprise given the war they'd had been fighting had been fairly even since hostilities with the Borg Collective had begun when the Borg had intruded in their domain and tried to assimilate them before they had driven the original group off and followed them through the gateway into a universe dominated by impure races.

Command wanted this ship to be destroyed, but the leader of the formation wanted to play psychologically with the crew first. All they had to do was to charge their weapons up make a few threatening moves in the hopes the crew would panic. It was more fun that way than playing with the mindless group mind of the collective.

* * *

B'elanna ground her teeth together so hard a part of her mind, the part dominated by her human half, was afraid she would develop lock-jaw as she struggled to work with the transporter. The moment she had seen the bio-ships on the view screen she had immediately headed for the nearest transporter room after telling Chakotay what she planned to do, knowing her former Maquis leader would understand and would tell the captain what she had in mind.

There was no time for her to head to a torpedo bay where the main work in refitting the torpedo firing system with a transporter was taking place around the clock depending on how many of her engineering crew she could actually spare on the project, but as she worked on the transporter, knowing it was her only chance since all of the modified torpedoes were stuck in the torpedo bays.

Sure, Tuvok could fire a high-yield torpedo from the bridge, but firing the torpedo when the ships were so close, and with that dampening field in place, it would be hard to target a point close to the ships…. That was why she was working on the transporter system, which had seen a great deal of damage since they'd entered Borg space, making everything nine times more difficult than it needed to be. The idea she had was to beam a torpedo or two behind the bio-ships before the aliens could react, destroying them from behind.

B'elanna was so caught up in her work and she was in her stride when the comm annoyingly chirped, and it made her jump and drop her tools. Cursing under her breath, she tapped her comm badge as she gathered up her tools to get back to work.

"Torres here," she said over the line, hoping this was not a long conversation.

"B'elanna, how's it going?"

B'elanna sighed mentally when she heard Janeway's voice; ever since she had become the chief engineer, a job she really enjoyed because she loved working with technology, though it came with drawbacks such as never-ending pressure and time constraints, she had learnt the hard and the easy way how demanding Janeway was even if she liked the other woman. Still, she would have preferred it if no-one had called her at that point.

"Not well," she said bluntly as she worked, "the transporters have taken a fair amount of damage, and they weren't designed to hold such in-depth programming and rejigging like this… What are the bio-ships doing?"

Over the line, she heard Janeway sigh. "They're still sitting there," she said, "they keep arming and powering up their forward weapons, but that's all they do. There are occasional energy spikes that look like they're about to fire, but they don't do it. Chakotay says they're playing with us, and I agree with him."

B'elanna nodded, struggling to concentrate on what she was doing while she worked. "It's a trick the Cardassians used against our hideouts or suspected hideouts," she said shortly, "they would arm and lock on with their forward disruptors and pretend they're going to fire, but they power down at the last moment. They did it to invite an attack, and some really stupid hot-headed Maquis fell for the trick. Hook, line, and sinker. They quickly learnt the depths of their mistake."

"That's what Chakotay described," Janeway agreed. "He says we just have to keep calm and only fire if they do."

"Good thing we've got Tuvok at tactical, then," B'elanna commented absently as she worked, but she yelped in shock as an unexpected electric spark burnt the tips of her fingers, and reflexively she let out a string of rude and extremely creative Klingon curses.

"B'elanna?! What's happened, are you okay?"

Pleased Janeway was not immediately calling her up on her language since Starfleet regulations frowned on the use of such language, B'elanna calmed down quickly and sucked her fingers. "Ow, there was power in that circuit… I wasn't expecting it to be that overpowered…," she whispered, gazing at her fingers for a moment before she resumed her work. "I'm still here, Captain," she went on, guessing that Janeway wanted a more in-depth report, "I just electrocuted myself, but I'm okay."

* * *

On the bridge, Janeway winced with sympathy when she heard about what had just happened, and she was just about to ask the other woman for an in-depth report but decided to leave her to it. "Get it seen to when you're finished, B'elanna," she ordered, "but keep us informed."

"Aye, Captain."

When the line was closed down Janeway looked at the view screen and the bio-ships surrounding them. She wondered what was going through their minds and what they were planning to do, though the answer was pretty redundant. There were so many ships if the aliens had not despatched so many of them to where Voyager was in order to batter it down relying on sheer strength through numbers, she would be very surprised.

Janeway distantly heard the turbo lift doors open, but she paid it no attention - it was probably just another member of the crew coming to the bridge, besides she had a lot on her mind as she tried to work out what they could do.

"Mr Tuvok, have you managed to break through the dampening field?" she asked.

"Negative Captain," Tuvok replied, futilely stabbing at the buttons on his console.

Janeway sighed under her breath, and she turned around to face the Vulcan to offer him some suggestion to help compensate for the dampening field in case B'elanna was unable to get the transporter working on time, but she found her view obscured by the sight of Kes.

"Kes?" she whispered, surprised to see the girl on the bridge; the Ocampan girl had been keeping herself to herself recently, whether it was to get on with her work or because she was trying to find a way to contact Species 8472 without endangering the crew because of some telepathic property beyond Janeway's comprehension, she didn't know.

"I can hear them," the girl whispered in her calm, serene voice, though it was trembling with the effort like she was trying very hard not to collapse in agony, and Janeway's gasped when she saw the tears coming down Kes's face. "They've been trying to rip through my mind, trying to get knowledge of our defences… I've tried to lock them out, but there are too many of them. I've been trying to tell them… tell them we just want to leave Borg space. They just don't listen. I-I came here…. hoping you can help me, Tuvok…."

Tuvok was instantly by Kes's side, his hand raised as if to perform a mind-meld with the Ocampan, but Janeway, while she could understand the logic behind that, knowing Tuvok's mental control might be enough to help Kes resist the aliens' assault, wondered if he had weighed up the consequences of his own knowledge of Voyager's defences and their current plans becoming known to the aliens.

But she was surprised when Tuvok instead laid his hand on the girl's shoulder. "Kes, listen to my voice," the Vulcan instructed softly, "concentrate on the aliens and their attempts to probe your mind. Imagine yourself constructing a wall. Now relax. Concentrate on that wall, you are building it block by block."

Janeway and Chakotay exchanged a look. Both of them were in tune enough despite the often fraught relationship they had whenever something came to shake it up to know what the other was thinking, and both of them were worried this might not work. They had faith Tuvok's attempt to help Kes resist the aliens, but they guessed the Vulcan was trying to help teach the girl to hold them off long enough to help B'elanna with the transporter, but they also had doubts it would work.

Tuvok was good, they knew that, but they didn't know enough about the aliens to tell if this was going to work out enough.

Kes's face screwed up with the effort, and she shook her head, more tears trickling down her face. "N-no," she whimpered uncharacteristically, "I can't...I can't, Tuvok. There are too many of them… .they're battering down my mind!" Kes threw her hands up and pressed them against the sides of her heard as if she were trying to hold off her attacks in the physical world as well.

"Torres to bridge. I think I've gotten it, Captain," B'elanna's came through over the comm, sounding both relieved and worried at the same time.

Janeway sighed with relief. "Proceed, lieutenant," she ordered, making a mental note to find a way to treat B'elanna to something fantastic later.

On the viewscreen, a small number of torpedoes were seen being transported into space by the bio-ships, taking the aliens by surprise and the ships were destroyed. Janeway mentally cringed at the number of torpedoes B'elanna used, but she guessed the engineer wanted to make absolutely sure.

The result of the destruction of the alien ships had on Kes was dramatic. The girl closed her eyes and almost collapsed over the railings, and Janeway flinched at the sight, wondering to herself just how much strain the girl had been under to get into that state in the first place.

Tuvok and another crew member were instantly there to help stabilise the girl so she didn't collapse to the ground, but Kes recovered more rapidly than Janeway had expected; she'd had her attention diverted when they had first fled a bio-ship after beaming Chakotay's team back after Harry had been attacked, so she wasn't sure how long it had taken but Kes had been alright after a moment after they'd managed to escape.

"Kes? Are you alright?" she asked gently.

Kes nodded, but it looked like she was trying very hard not to be sick. "Yes, I'm fine," she croaked, "there were just so many minds attacking my own mind when they were killed it was like the contact was a piece of frayed elastic."

Janeway flinched at the visual image Kes had just given her.

But Kes was not finished. She looked up at the Captain with hooded eyes that gave her a haggard expression. "There's something you need to know, Captain," she said breathlessly as she tried hard to recover from her ordeal. "The aliens, before they died, told me they had won against the Borg."

* * *

Oooh, a cliffhanger. Love those.

Anyway, what do you think is going to happen next?

Until the next time...


	9. Chapter 9 The Cube

I don't own Star Trek, but I own this story and trying to do something different.

Feel free to leave feedback.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

Not for the first time, Janeway wondered to herself when things had become so problematic for her and her crew since they had entered the Delta Quadrant. It brought back memories of her time learning at school where she learnt about the history of the Federation before her knowledge was further enhanced, about the voyages of Jonathan Archer and the others of his time frame, but while their situations were remarkably similar; starships from Earth, sent out to explore interstellar space, far from home, alone, their situations were vastly different.

Even back then the support base of captains like Archer had been strong enough, and even while travelling at warp five on the old warp scale, it wouldn't have taken long for the Enterprise NX-01 to return home, or at least contact Starfleet and everyone they'd left behind.

But ever since the Caretaker had dragged them into the Delta Quadrant, and the later encounter with Suspiria had only made the nightmare worse because the other Caretaker had been far from willing to actually help, though Janeway continued to hold out hope even to this day even if they hadn't actually seen her for a long time now, that letting her go would make Suspiria actually think.

But so far the second Caretaker in this part of the galaxy had left them alone, though what she was doing Janeway had no idea, though she still sometimes thought about her, wondering just what was going through the mind of the entity.

Her current thoughts was weighing on her mind as they continued to cross Borg space while still at red alert (Janeway wished the designers behind the Intrepid class and the other classes of ships built around the time Voyager had been constructed hadn't developed an alarm mode where the bridge lighting was dark, though she understood the necessity of power conservation), but so far nothing had happened, and even if what Kes had said was true about the Borg's defeat after being connected to the aliens, she had no intention of dropping her guard.

Janeway still blamed herself for stranding the crew in the Delta Quadrant, she had long since sworn never to make that mistake again. No matter what Seska had believed, Janeway had no intention of risking the lives of her crew, but then again no-one in their right mind would ever want to cross Borg space, though while Chakotay had made the good point about there being still plenty of Delta Quadrant left to explore, she had felt going through Borg territory would be a great way to shorten the distance even if it was risky, but if they had taken the right precautions they would be safe.

But events had not been in their favour.

If they had known about the war between the Collective and Species 8472 before they'd even entered Borg territory, they would have done what Chakotay had stated they should be doing when she had made her reckless plan to forge an alliance with the Borg - just let them fight it out between themselves, but the attack on Harry had made things personal for her.

Janeway pushed those thoughts aside - thinking about the past was not going to help her or her crew anytime soon, and besides that, they needed to just get through Borg space without knowing for sure what was out there. Lifting up the padd given to her by Tuvok earlier to document his report, Janeway read through it once more.

Transwarp signatures had been detected, but none of the usual indications of the quantum singularities Species 8472 used to enter this reality; she wasn't worried about that right now, from what she knew about the aliens, okay it wasn't much, Species 8472 was probably more interested in attacking more attractive targets. She hoped it was the case now, and that they were planning to attack places like planets or large clusters of ships.

 _When will this end?_ she thought to herself despairingly.

When Voyager had entered Borg space, they had been prepared to detect transwarp signatures and they had, but Tuvok had noticed something about the way the Borg moved in a manner he referred to as both logical and orderly. In the report Tuvok made special emphasis for her benefit about picking up seven transwarp signatures that continued to match, forcing the Vulcan to conclude something was very wrong with the Borg. Tuvok had included diagrams using the star charts compiled by stellar cartography to help Tom determine a shorter route through Borg space to show what the Borg ships were doing.

The Borg Cubes were….going around in circles.

It was just so completely bizarre Janeway had wondered for a moment if she had gone through another universe herself. Her knowledge and personal experience of the Borg was limited, she had never encountered the Cube which had decimated Starfleet at Wolf 359, and she had only been on the peripheral of that incident involving the deranged android Lore, but Janeway felt she understood enough about the Borg Collective to know they were not the type to wander around space in circles.

Tuvok may have been a Vulcan but that did not mean he didn't know anything about emotion. He noted in the report he'd given her the Cubes seemed to be travelling to a place at high speed, stopping and then going in another direction, only to repeat the pattern, but Voyager's sensors were good enough to tell the stresses caused by their manoeuvres was putting a lot of stress on the hull of the ships. Tuvok found it virtually impossible to explain, but he speculated the Borg on those ships were confused.

Janeway didn't really care since she had made up her mind and had already given instructions to Tom that if the sensors detected even a spark of a transwarp echo in their current flight path, he was to avoid it; Kes had told them straight the Borg had been heavily attacked using neurogenic weapons which tore through the Collective mind, doing God knew what to them. Janeway really did not want to know what the mental state of those drones on those ships was, so she thought it was best if they just avoided them. It sounded simple to her, and yet…. somehow, she knew they would encounter one of those Cubes.

It was unavoidable. It seemed to be the story of their lives in this part of the galaxy.

"Problems?" Chakotay's gentle voice drifted over to her ears.

Janeway turned to smile at him. "Ah, just thinking about what I read in that report," she said.

Chakotay nodded and looked thoughtful as he moved his head to the side so he could think about it himself. "Yes, I know what you mean," he said slowly. "It's not like the Borg to do anything that doesn't have a point."

Janeway lifted a brow, guessing rightly he was thinking about the time he had been plugged into that miniature Collective, but she didn't open her mouth. "My mind keeps going back to what Kes said about those neurological weapons Species 8472 used on the Collective," she said, looking at her lover with serious eyes. "Chakotay, I really do not want to know. We have enough troubles as it is."

"I know, and I agree with you. We need to think for ourselves, but I also remember what Kes said about the aliens wanting to purge our universe," Chakotay reminded her.

Janeway shrugged. "What can we do?" she asked. "The ship is in pieces and we're still stuck in Borg space. The Collective we don't know about, though it looks like they've been affecting just like that group of Borg manipulated by Lore who had only been driven into that state because the Enterprise crew had sent that drone with a sense of individuality back when they should have sent that computer virus instead."

Chakotay felt she was being a little bit harsher towards the Enterprise crew than he felt she should be, but he could understand her point. The news of what Jean Luc Picard had done had surprised everyone in Starfleet, and dozens more had said he should have just killed the drone or something like that, but truthfully there was nothing they could do about it now.

"Don't be like that," he whispered forcefully, shocking Kathryn who looked at him sharply; Chakotay sighed and hoped she didn't lose her temper. Everyone was under enough stress as it was since Kes's announcement the war was over and that the Borg had lost it, and the last thing they needed for morale was for the captain and first officer to have a public fight on the bridge. "We're still alive," he pressed on, staring at her strongly. "That's all that matters, and as long as we keep thinking we will get through this, then we will."

Although she was smarting from the surprise she'd received when Chakotay had spoken to her in that manner, Janeway was grateful her lover was able to make her see sense, and he was right. They were still alive and that was all that mattered, though they all knew the aliens could come for them at any point for the destruction of those ships, and Species 8472 didn't seem like the type of race to let things go.

"Captain," Tom began suddenly, and she turned her head to take in the helm officer's shadowy form as he worked on the conn. "I'm picking up a Borg ship ahead but its a derelict."

"Confirmed," Tuvok announced from Tactical. "It's currently in our current flight path. There are minimal power readings emanating from the Cube."

Janeway's first thought was to simply order Tom to change course. And yet… it was so tempting to beam a team over even if the last time they had done so had nearly ended in tragedy, but she wanted to know what the current state of the Borg was. The only way she knew how to do something like that was to beam a team over and investigate, but she glanced to her left and saw that Chakotay was looking at her with concern as if worried what kind of decision she would make. She leaned over so they could have a conference without anyone overhearing. "What do you think?" she whispered.

"I can tell you're tempted to have a party beam over and salvage anything we might need," Chakotay said. "But we don't know what the state of the drones over there is like. It could be a terrible risk."

"I know," she replied. "But ever since Kes told us about how…unstable the Borg have become, and Tuvok's reports state the Borg ships are going around everywhere in circles, I've been curious about what the new state of the Borg is. To be honest, I'd rather we knew what it was now while we still can. I don't want us to encounter the Collective, or rather what's left of it, again and discover a breed of Borg which is more dangerous than what we've encountered."

She knew she was going over the top with her explanation, but if there was one thing she had learnt about Chakotay, it was knowing she would have to give good explanations rather than anything ill-thought-out, but judging from his expression she could tell he was on the verge of saying it was a bad idea.

"I know its not a good idea," she said solemnly, "but we've been lurching from one crisis to the next for so long, and besides if we want to get home we're going to have to think of new strategies to keep ourselves safe, and besides I want a guide to base our strategies on if we ever encounter the Borg again."

She said it as if they would ever encounter the Collective again, but she had worded it like the chance was uncertain since they had no way of knowing just what the aliens were doing to the Borg.

Chakotay mulled it over in his head. On the one hand he just wanted to tell Kathryn to forget the idea which was blossoming in her head and not waste any time here than they actually needed, but on the other she had raised a good point about knowing exactly what was happening to what was left of the Borg, though he could guess the rest of the crew would not care one little bit if the Borg were just wiped from existence though they didn't know what the aliens were going to do once the Collective was gone.

Besides if they did encounter some remnant of the Borg, later on, it would be a good idea to be one hundred per cent certain about what they would find instead of blundering into a situation and finding the Borg were homicidal instead of moving around assimilating with zombie-like efficiency.

"Alright," he nodded in agreement. "Do you want me to go?"

Janeway blew out a breath. "No, I will," she decided and quickly spoke over his protests. "I'll go because it's my decision, and besides I've asked too much of the crew recently."

Chakotay wished she stopped with this 'I'm going it alone attitude,' as he frequently thought about it because she was not alone. "I don't like this at all," he began, but she interrupted him solemnly.

"I know. I love you, and I don't want to lose you, but its time I started taking a more active role in this mess," Janeway told him, making it clear to him she was not going to let this go.

* * *

Until the next time...


	10. Chapter 10 Inside the Cube

Disclaimer - I don't own Star Trek Voyager.

I am so sorry it's taken me so long to update this story, but I had tons of others to get through so I am sorry to keep you waiting. Please feel free to read my other Star Trek one-shots and please feel free to let me know what you think.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

Clad in the armoured battle suits which had recently been created - she had to admire the engineering and security staff for their workmanship even if the suits were bulky, difficult to move in but she had to admire the work her crew had done even when Voyager had been so heavily crippled - Janeway walked slowly through the cramped corridors of the Borg Cube followed by a small number of her engineers and security officers.

Although their suits made it tricky to move, it was made even more difficult because of the state of the ship. Kathryn had seen clips of the recordings made from the Ohniaka III outpost when Lore's Borg had slaughtered the scientific crew working there, and considering just how the Borg had been depicted in the past as a remorseless army of cybernetic zombies, but compared to the Borg whom Lore had corrupted, it was as though they were two different groups in much the same way the Romulans and the Vulcans were seen despite the shared ancestry.

But the Borg here…

Where even Lore's group of emotionally insane Borg had a degree of order and self, here on this Borg Cube there was none of that. Ever since she and her party had beamed to the Cube, Janeway had been taken aback by what she had seen, it was like walking into the middle of a nightmare she'd had since she was a small child and she had read the mission reports of the Kirk's Enterprise, namely the reports where Kirk and his crew had encountered that weird polywater infection which had driven the crew of the Enterprise borderline insane before encountering the USS Defiant which had become caught in that interphase.

When she had been a child, and she had worked out she wanted to become a Starfleet officer, hopefully to become the captain of a ship, Kathryn had obsessively collected as many old mission reports as she could get, which weren't difficult to find considering how they were found in Federation libraries and were easily found on databases so all she'd need to do was go to a computer, do a bit of searching, and then read. But while there were scary reports, her father had reassured her by saying that as Starfleet officers everyone had to accept risk from time to time and that most of the times afterwards the effects of the phenomenon were fully understood and knowledge had been gained.

At the time Kathryn had been reassured and she had pursued her dream of becoming a Starfleet officer.

And yet…

She had always had a nightmare which always delved into her deeper fears and uncertainties about whatever she would find out there, inspired by the mission reports made from Kirk's original 5-year mission on the Enterprise, of her crew either dead, injured, or insane.

And she wasn't alone. She had read the account from the Enterprise D, of how Jean-Luc Picard and Commander Data had returned to the ship and found the crew had been infected by a genetic virus which hacked into the dormant genes which still held a record of prehistoric DNA codes which had been laying dormant for centuries, and it had only highlighted in Kathryn's mind the nightmare did come true from time to time, but by then she was an experienced officer and she had learnt over the years such things were inevitable.

While there had been a few minor cases during her early career before Voyager's keel had even been laid down, the closest Janeway had ever come to the old nightmare had been during that mess where she and Neelix had returned only to find the crew infected by the Macrovirus. Janeway had only managed to hold it together by focusing on her old desire, her will, to get the crew home safe and sound. But it had been a close call and she had never failed to admit to herself the nightmare had nearly come true on top of the nightmare she'd had ever since she had stranded the crew in the Delta Quadrant, of her not being able to get everyone back home safe and sound.

But this...

The Borg Cube was a shambles, the corridors were in a dilapidated state with chunks of the wall blown away thanks to high powered weaponry and Janeway was concerned whenever she caught sight of the damage just how much the ship could take before there was a hull rupture, which seemed more likely since the Borg Cube's regeneration ability was gone. More than once, they had come across regeneration alcoves smashed or half destroyed, their components littering the floor, and once they had found an alcove which had been half torn out of the wall fitting.

Fortunately, the Borg Drones were too busy killing each to pay the away team much attention, it was just the way they were going about the ship like packs of savage and extremely hungry animals that worried her because she knew it wouldn't take much for them to turn their attention to one of the Starfleet crew.

Janeway averted her eyes from the sight of a large space surrounded by the dark, disturbing vista of Borg technology - dark colours mingling with a sinister green glow - which was made even more sinister by the sight of the Borg corpses littering the ground.

Behind Janeway, she heard someone scan the corpses with a tricorder. "They've been dead for four days," it was one of the engineers, though Janeway wasn't sure who it was since she was trying very hard _not_ to think about how long the Borg had been dead for, especially when she saw signs the Borg had killed each other; there was one Borg corpse lying on the ground with a long piece of metal driven through his back and out through the front, while another corpse clearly had a snapped neck.

The engineer's report made Janeway pause and turn her head around, cursing at the weight of the thing she was wearing to protect herself even while she held her rifle - while she believed projectile weapons belonged strictly in the past, she had to admit the technology was still useful - even tightly when a loud piercing shriek echoed through the corridor, making the Cube sound like a haunted house.

"Don't bother scanning the _corpses,_ " she instructed, "keep your eyes open for any _live_ drones."

B'elanna sidled up to her after she'd turned around and resumed her pace. "Captain, I know you want to try to find a working Transwarp coil," the engineer said, "but I've got my doubts we'll find one in working order, especially in an environment like _this."_

Janeway nodded, not taking her eyes off of the corpses and the general state of the Cube. "We've got to risk it, B'elanna," she said, wondering what it said about her as person and as a captain of a Federation shop that she was willing to go this far to get her crew home and she instantly shoved that thought aside; she had been doing enough soul searching recently ever since this whole mess had begun, she didn't need to do it even more. Especially now, when she needed to be focusing on the current danger. The Borg were all around them and they were more dangerous and far more unstable now than they'd ever known.

She owed it to them because she had dragged them into this mess in the first place, and she was determined to get them out of it, and if that meant surviving an away mission into a Borg Cube surrounded by devastation, so be it.

B'elanna was still in a gloomy mood. "I just wish we had a better idea of the risks," she said, "I mean, when we set up this plan to board the Cube and retrieve a coil from the Cube after we performed that scan to get an idea of where to find one, I never expected us to run across that party of drones who were killing each other-."

"Don't remind me, B'elanna," Janeway interrupted, thankful the bulkiness of her suit hid the shudder at the reminder of the animalistic, degenerated state of the Borg at the moment. She had wondered at the moment if the Borg of this ship were unique, or if the whole of the Collective was acting in this way but either way, there was nothing they could do, and if she were honest with herself she couldn't do anything about it.

"Sorry," B'elanna replied sheepishly before she became more business-like as she lifted up her tricorder. "The plasma readings are coming from up ahead. We're almost there."

Janeway nodded automatically before she suddenly felt a little bit foolish since B'elanna couldn't actually _see_ her nod. "Good," she said before she went silent and focused on her other plans, which seemed to be the only to stop her actually thinking about the Borg and their current state.

When she had made the plan to board the Cube after she'd ordered for a scan for any of the typical signs of a propulsion system before a trace picked up plasma emissions from several parts of the ship, some of them more unstable than most which probably indicated severe damage, though Janeway had no real interest in any of those areas, but the sheer number of areas on the Cube where the plasma was emanating from surprised Janeway since it didn't appear they were connected with one another.

After finding one portion of the Cube where the plasma emissions weren't as high as some other parts of the ship, Janeway had an away team put together, equipped and protected with the new armoured suits that had been devised to protect the crew from the Borg, and they had immediately left Voyager to retrieve any piece of Borg transwarp technology they could find while they tried to download what was in the Borg's tactical database while they studied the Borg themselves.

The problem was how do you study the Borg. It was too dangerous to beam one or more of the drones on board Voyager even if security and engineering could guarantee it would be safe, but because they didn't know the full extent of what Species 8472 had done to the Collective the risk was even higher, and even Janeway wasn't stupid enough to beam live drones onboard her ship. In the end,a she had decided to stick to personal observations and tricorder data which relayed the information straight to Voyager's computer. Everything taken would be studied and poured over for ages, but it would definitely allow them to figure out strategies to make sure they were prepared for any future encounters with the Borg.

One of the most annoying facts about this mission was the fact the plasma emissions were so high they couldn't transport straight into the part of the Cube where they were coming from, so that meant they would need to transport a slight distance away while they were weighted down by these annoying suits.

But luckily they had a good reason for beaming away - they could gather information about the Borg and their current state, but that didn't mean it wasn't still irritating.

Personally, Janeway hoped she and her crew never encountered a Borg ship again, but knowing their luck it wouldn't just be inevitable it was a certainty.

Janeway was snapped out of her thoughts as they entered a large dark chamber that had featured a large glowing column in the centre of the room, the column was illuminated by small green plasma fire, so that made it positive this was the place where the plasma emissions were coming from. But thanks to the Borg database that had been downloaded during the earlier visit where Harry had been infected by Species 8472's DNA, they had gained a lot more information about some basics of Borg technology. Janeway only needed a quick glance around the room to see that they had walked into a transwarp chamber.

She had to physically turn and twist her body to face B'elanna, who was busy studying it with her tricorder. The half Klingon engineer noticed her attention and had to turn her body as well. "This is it," she said, slightly redundantly. "There are some elements in here which have similar components to our own engines and more than a few differences, but its definitely similar to a primary warp coil, only more powerful."

Janeway only had one question in mind. "Can we remove it?"

"We've got the equipment, so it should be okay. But I need to do a complete check to make sure it is in one piece. We don't want to uncouple this from the Cube's systems and take it back with us to Voyager, only for it to blow up in our faces," B'elanna said, looking at Janeway solemnly with a tired expression, "we've had more than enough of those recently, haven't we?"

"Yes, we have," Janeway whispered before she spoke in a louder voice. "Alright, B'elanna. We'll play it your way. How long do you think you'll need?"

The sound of B'elanna blowing out a breath echoed through the communication system as the engineer made a rough estimate. "Give me half an hour to make a check, and then another half an hour to get it out."

Janeway made a noise and B'elanna looked at her captain with exasperation. "Captain, we can't rush these things, and this place," she gestured around the chamber to emphasise her point, "is already heavily damaged. We don't even know if the transwarp coil inside this chamber is in any better condition than any of the others."

Janeway mentally groaned and kicked herself for being stupid. "Alright take as long as you need," she said, and she walked over to the door while the last of the officers of the away team entered the chamber.

B'elanna watched her walk to the doorway curiously. "Where are you going?" she asked.

"I'm going to take a few members of the security detail with me to scout around and collect more information about the Borg."

B'elanna was alarmed. "Is that wise?" she asked in concern. Unlike Chakotay who had taken a backseat and would only intervene if he felt the need was necessary, B'elanna was not just going to do the same. "Captain, with the Borg currently insane-!"

Janeway held up a hand to forestall the lecture though she was curious about why everyone seemed determined to stop her from doing things like this. "B'elanna, you're going to have your hands full with disconnecting this thing," she pointed at the transwarp coil, "and besides I want to see for myself what's happened to the Borg; a quick walk here doesn't answer my questions."

B'elanna sighed to herself as she accepted the inevitable. She had been asked by Chakotay to make sure Janeway didn't do anything really stupid, and she had promised her friend she'd do it. She knew if Chakotay found out Janeway had left on her own in a Borg Cube she would be in for it. "Alright, just don't go too far, please," she pleaded.

Janeway gave her a long pointed stare filled with suspicion. "Alright," she conceded, "we won't. I'm taking a few security officers with me for a quick look around, but keep in constant touch."

"Okay," B'elanna conceded while she mentally went over everything she planned to say to Chakotay if he ever discovered what his latest girlfriend had gotten herself into this time.

* * *

After taking some security officers for her own team and leaving the rest of the detachment Tuvok had sent over with the away team to protect the engineers, Janeway set off on her own to find some drones to study, or to download information from one of the Borg's own distribution nodes to add to the growing collection of knowledge about the Collective.

As she held out her rifle in front of her while keeping her eyes open for any sign of the Borg, Janeway had to wonder about B'elanna's behaviour since it wasn't like her to be that concerned. She began to wonder if she had been told to keep an eye on her, but Janeway quickly pushed that aside when, with a shriek, a couple of Borg drones appeared while they were being chased by a number of other Borg, who were screaming and hollering.

Janeway gestured quickly to the others to hide so the Borg wouldn't see them, but the Borg only had eyes for their former comrades.

Janeway's eyes widened in horror when the Borg chasing the two other drones let out inside cries, and now they were close-by where she could get a good look at them, she could see that several of the Borg drones were missing their implants.

 _No,_ she corrected herself with horror while she made sure her tricorder was out and the instrument was out, reminding herself, despite the horror she was feeling, she was a scientist and a Starfleet officer, _they're not just_ _ **missing**_ _implants; they've mutilated themselves to get rid of them!_

Janeway shuddered when she saw the gaping open wounds, some of them looked like they were still bleeding, but thankfully the dark lighting made it hard for her to be one hundred per cent sure. It definitely looked as though rather than simply remove the implants carefully, which was what was recommended by doctors and cyberneticists to people who'd become free of the influence of the Hive mind, the Borg on this ship had simply opted to rip them out without caring about the pain.

Some of the group of Borg looked like they'd torn more implants than others, but their wounds were still severe. And yet, as she watched the Borg ahead, Janeway could see something animalistic, almost primal in their body language which was usually stiff, slow, mechanical.

Robotic.

Not anymore.

Now the Borg drones were moving like wild animals hunting in a jungle, their faces showing more cruelty than she would have expected, offset by the pale pallor of their skin, highlighted by the green lighting around them. The two Borg drones who were running away from their former comrades weren't it that

While the tricorder worked on recording what was going on, Janeway couldn't tear her eyes away when the gang of Borg drones launched themselves onto the two other drones, their roars of triumph augmented by the heartless sound of vocal manipulation, mixing with the sounds of screaming while the Borg descended on the two drones like a pack of animals before there was nothing but silence.

Taking a deep breath, Janeway turned to the others while the deranged drones tore the two unfortunate Borg apart - she shuddered when she saw one of the deranged drones tear off one of the legs of its dead former drone - and said in a voice that she prayed desperately was her usual commanding, confident voice and didn't betray her true feelings, "Let's get out of here. We need to find a distribution node."

By the time they got back to B'elanna after the chief engineer had contacted them to say she'd successfully removed the transwarp coil and was ready to get back to Voyager, Janeway and the rest of the away team were more than happy to leave.

They had found a Borg distribution node and they had found other Borg drones being torn to pieces by the others, and they had even witnessed more than a few Borg drones fighting each other, using their prosthetic arms which either cut or burned their way into their opponents.

B'elanna looked into Janeway's face plate questioningly, but despite the questions on the tip of her tongue to ask her what they'd seen since the half-Klingon had noticed her looking ill, she said instead. "We're ready to go back."

"Good," Janeway replied with relief.

"What did you see?" B'elanna just had to ask when she saw how relieved her captain was to be leaving, which was rare in itself.

Janeway blew out a quiet breath as her mind conjured up the image of the Borg slicing into themselves with their prosthetic arms, that Borg drone ripping out the others' leg - god alone knew what the Borg drone planned to do with it, but she couldn't help but wonder if the Borg had become so deranged they would turn to eating the others, but she shoved that aside.

"Trust me, B'elanna- you don't want to know," Janeway answered quickly, distracting herself from the horrors of what she'd just witnessed by looking at the transwarp coil. It wasn't especially large, it was as tall as her waist and made up of single column with three rings in the top, the bottom and the middle of the coil. On the top was a small copper-coloured top, probably where the power was fed in.

"Do you have everything for this?" she asked.

B'elanna nodded, though she made a mental note to find out from one of the others what they had seen. "Yes. This is the main part of the coil, okay and we're ready to beam back to the ship, but I just wish we had a more in-depth knowledge of Borg transwarp technology."

"You think there might be a problem?"

"Faster than light travel is full of problems, you know that," B'elanna pointed out. "I'm just saying our knowledge of transwarp technology is extremely basic, so we may not be able to really understand how this thing works," she patted the coil with her gloved hand, but the bulky thing made the movement both sloppy and clumsy.

Janeway had to admit B'elanna had a point. One of the biggest downsides to Federation science was, despite all the work that went into different projects, all of those grants to studying more advanced propulsion methods very little came out of it. Oh, Starfleet had learnt quite a bit over the years, yes, and they had even used the knowledge derived from what little had been discovered into improving the speed levels of starships.

Janeway could recite the reasons behind the abandonment behind many of the projects almost verbatim, but while she could understand the reasons since it was mostly discovered something had been discovered that was essentially hazardous, she had - more than once - over the last couple of years Starfleet had found a way of making the technology work so it would definitely shorten the trip home.

 _Then again it wasn't like we've had much luck themselves_ , Janeway thought to herself irritably, remembering how those experiments with warp 10 had gone.

She pushed those memories aside and focused on the coil worriedly.

"Do you think you can get it working?" Janeway asked in concern, the memory of seeing Tom Paris mutating filling her mind as she reminded herself of the dangers, glancing back up into her friend's eyes.

B'elanna seemed to shrug, but thanks to the suit she was wearing Janeway had no way of being totally sure. "I don't know. It depends on what I find in their technical database. Did you find a node?"

"Yes, we got the download. How much we'll find which is useful, I don't know," Janeway replied before she looked around the room, shuddering at the dark, disturbing vista of Borg technology. "Come on, let's get away from here."

* * *

When the Away team beamed back to Voyager, Janeway was relieved to see Chakotay waiting for them in the transporter room. While the captain in her wondered just who had been left in command of the bridge, she found that she didn't care. She immediately tore off her helmet and rushed to him, knocking the air out of his lungs, but she clamped her lips to his own and snogged him for all he was worth. She caught Chakotay by surprise when she slammed into him, but he recovered quickly.

She knew it wasn't exactly seemly for a captain to be seen kissing her boyfriend in front of everyone, but right now Janeway couldn't care less. She sucked down on Chakotay's lips which made him moan. She cursed the suit because she couldn't feel what Chakotay was doing right now, but she knew he had lifted her arms.

She heard an amused cough and she and Chakotay broke apart and she felt herself blush when she realised they were being watched by the other members of the Away team and by the transporter chief.

Chakotay's voice was curiously amused as he asked, "What was that for?"

Knowing he would see through a glib answer, Janeway closed her eyes for a minute before reopening them while she fought the memories down of what she'd seen on the Borg ship. "I'll tell you later," she whispered to him before she turned around to B'elanna and the others. They looked amused by the public display of affection, so Janeway had no trouble putting them in their places before they could say something that. would land them all into trouble. "What are you waiting for? Get those suits off and get that transwarp coil down to engineering-."

"Actually, Captain," B'elanna interrupted, "I'd prefer to take it to the science lab. The instruments there are more sensitive and specialised than the ones in engineering. I want to learn more about the science of how this works, and also how to better install it in Voyager's systems. Once we've done a study of the coil, we can move it down to engineering so we can better understand the technology."

Janeway didn't like the thought of the potential amount of time being implied to study the coil. Even if the issues of them being stuck in Borg space wasn't a problem, she still wouldn't like it. But with the Borg defeated by Species 8472 in the war and after seeing the effects of whatever it was the extra-dimensional aliens had done to the collective's mind firsthand, Janeway did not want to be here any longer than they needed to be.

B'elanna saw the expression on Janeway's face. "Captain," she said quietly, "we all know you want to get us home safely. But like what happened with the core matrix of the warp core, this isn't something to rush. We don't know anything about transwarp technology; yeah, just 'cause Starfleet experimented with it on and off over the years since the Excelsior project, it doesn't mean we know everything. I need to study what we managed to scan from the Borg Cube to learn more about how it all works before I can install it.

"Another problem we've got is we don't know how badly the coil is damaged. If I install it as it is in Voyager's systems, then we might be blown to bits. My team and I are going to need a lot of time just to figure out how it works before we can do that. And if it is damaged, I'm going to need to know how to repair it, and who knows we might learn just enough to learn how to travel at transwarp speeds ourselves."

Janeway sighed, and realised to herself she was doing it again, once more pushing her own desires to get everyone home the next day and not caring about what happened along the way. "No, I'm sorry, B'elanna," she admitted. "I know, we all know, you will need to take a look at the coil. I just don't want it to take forever."

B'elanna nodded, her eyes flickering over to Chakotay. She wondered if the two of them now together had, as a superstitious Klingon would have believed it, transferred traits of each other's personalities onto the other. She pushed that aside and said instead, "We'll try our best to be quick. We might also want to beam back over to the Cube to recover whatever we might need to make the repairs easier."

Janeway visibly shuddered and tried hard to restrain the shudder at the very _thought_ of returning to the Cube. Still she nodded anyway. "Okay," she replied in agreement, realising just how logical the idea was. "Just keep me informed."

B'elanna nodded and she turned to the other engineers to direct them to move the coil to the science lab while Janeway, Chakotay and the others left after seeing they weren't needed anymore.

Chakotay watched as she shed the protective suit quietly and he didn't say a word until she was donning her uniform jacket again. "You left B'elanna and the others, right?" he began.

Janeway turned to him. "I had to," she admitted softly, "B'elanna needed the time and the space needed to work without me and the others getting in the way, and besides I didn't like the thought of not having anything to do with my time when she was uncoupling the coil from the chamber. Still," she paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts.

Chakotay licked his lips. "What did you see?" he asked.

Janeway didn't reply instantly.

Concerned Chakotay watched her, worried suddenly in spite of himself. He wondered to himself just what kind of horrors had been on the Cube when the Away team had been beamed onboard. The tricorders had transmitted a vast amount of data over to Voyager's computer, and now there were teams going over everything gathered. That in itself would take time, but perhaps with B'elanna so occupied and he had never expected to say this to anyone, never mind himself, being here with the Cube might actually be beneficial. Still, he didn't want anyone to witness the horrors of what was going on to the drones on that Cube.

"The Borg were tearing themselves apart, Chakotay," Janeway whispered, looking down at her hands as she slowly zipped up her jacket, her mind going back to the horrifying events she'd witnessed but hadn't gotten involved in since it wouldn't have helped. "We watched as the Borg fought one another, using their prosthetic limbs to hack and drill away at each other."

Chakotay shuddered at the image, but his lover wasn't finished.

"But…I think the worst of it was when we saw two Borg drones being pursued by a much larger band of drones," Janeway lifted her head and stared at her lover. "It was like watching cavemen hunting down a pair of cornered animals who were terrified, or Chimpanzees hunting down a Red Colobus monkey before tearing it to shreds. They were terrifying, Chakotay. I have never seen _any_ race without any kind of thought or reason; the two cases of that polywater infection aside, at least on both counts everyone involved knew who they were, but the Borg on that ship… It was like they were animals. They caught the two Borg drones and killed them, one of them even managed to physically tear off one of the drones' legs. God only knows what they planned to do with it. I thought for a moment he might even eat it."

Chakotay closed his eyes and shuddered, already feeling his stomach feeling physically ill at the description. One of the reasons why he was a vegetarian was because it was so easy to kill an animal while ignoring its cries of pain and agony. He had never understood why his tribe, who had a much greater affinity for nature than those people who grew outside it in the so-called civilised world, ate meat when they knew the animals were much more than what people felt. It was even worse when you considered how many ancient peoples on many worlds, not just on Earth, practiced cannibalism. Chakotay understood the need to consume meat but he didn't like the thought of eating any kind of meat. It made him physically sick just to think about it.

"But those drones, Chakotay," Janeway's voice brought him back to focus on the conversation, "they had mutilated themselves to get rid of the implants that were covering their bodies. Some of them looked like they had just ripped out their implants and left them to bleed. In fact," she looked straight into Chakotay's dark eyes which were full of emotions that mirrored her own - disgust, horror, pity, and anger towards Species 8472 for what the extra-dimensional aliens had done to the Borg to reduce them to this state, though many people who had encountered the Borg and had lived to tell the tale of what the Collective had done to them would say the Borg deserved to suffer, "I could swear I saw one of the wounds bleeding, blood trickling down, but in the lighting of the Cube, I couldn't be absolutely sure."

Chakotay shuddered again at the image, but he focused on something else. From the way this was sounding it was like she had gone off on her own again, and he was about to say something about it, but then he caught sight of her expression and he decided to put it off for later.

* * *

B'elanna was standing back from the transwarp coil before the warp core while everybody else around her went about their duties. She and her engineering and many of the science staff had spent the last couple of weeks studying the coil, using the little knowledge they had of the technology stored in the Borg database to repair it.

 _That's the great thing about a cybernetic culture that is so computer dependent it's really not funny,_ she thought to herself, _they have everything they need to maintain and repair their technology stored in their computers, so if something does happen then all they need to do is upload the information straight into the brains of the drones assigned to the task._

To be honest, B'elanna was amazed by how straightforward the whole task of repairing the coil was, but she and her team had learnt a great deal. In truth she hadn't really expected the download from the distribution node to give them much to go on, so she had been surprised by how easy it was, and it put a lot into perspective about the computer-driven nature of the Collective.

But as she looked at it she realised it was so braindead simple.

All of the Borg were linked to a group mind and all their knowledge from the cultures they had wiped out in the name of raising the quality of life, though B'elanna and everybody else would call it murder of both life and everything that made those cultures what they were, was stored in the computers of the Collective, and if anything went wrong with their ship all the Collective needed to do was access that knowledge, and voila - the Cube is repaired.

In a battle, the computers directed the drones to set tasks - if a bulkhead was destroyed, the computers would sort everything out, re-routing power lines, and arranging for drones to repair the damage to mitigate the effects and make sure it didn't get out of hand. The computers also controlled the transwarp systems of the Cubes, and monitored them so if anything did go wrong it would be easy for them to repair it, and once her staff had worked out how the coil worked it with the help of the downloaded schematics and technical specs, it had been child's play to repair the coil.

The only hard part having the coil here on Voyager had been trying to integrate the damn thing into the ship's systems. It had taken them three whole days of trying to adapt the coil into Voyager's systems, and in that time B'elanna had gone without sleep in a manner similar to the time where she'd obsessed over that Pralor robot (she instantly shoved that thought aside; she _was not_ going to think about that mess, not right now even though the similarities between that time and repairing the coil and trying to make it work were similar), until Chakotay and Janeway had forced her to take some time off duty.

The similarities between the repairing and the integration of the transwarp coil and when she had been trying to figure out a way of repairing the Pralor robot only occurred to her later after she had gotten a few hours of sleep, and she remembered how they had adapted their warp plasma for the power cell of the robot. It then struck her that instead of adapting the Borg technology to Voyager, they should be adapting their technology to the Borg transwarp coil.

The coil was now online and it was ready to go, and hopefully, take them far from Borg space. But on the other hand, B'elanna truly had no idea how far the coil would take them before it burnt out. She had taken a few other away teams over to the Cube to scavenge components from some of the other coils, and they had found at least two more coils that were in good condition - more or less - but the captain didn't want them to plug in the other coils without first understanding how the technology worked and getting an idea of the risks.

Personally, B'elanna hoped that the coil shaved off a good portion of their journey home off, but even if Voyager only got as far as the edge of this section of Borg space then she would be just as happy, and she suspected the crew would also be pleased.

B'elanna jumped when her comm badge chirped and she tapped it when Janeway's voice called out, " _Janeway to Torres_."

"Torres here."

" _Is the transwarp coil ready?"_

"It's as ready as it will ever be, Captain," B'elanna replied, but she didn't sound enthusiastic and it was something Janeway picked up upon really quickly.

" _Is there a problem B'elanna?"_

Knowing she couldn't get out of this one B'elanna said truthfully, "No, not as far as I can see. The coil is installed, and judging from what we've gathered from the Borg's database, it is fully functional. But I just wish we had a more reliable way of testing it to see if it can get us home."

" _I know,_ " Janeway replied and her voice was full of sympathy. " _But this is the only way_."

"Yeah," B'elanna answered just as the comm. line cut out while wishing it wasn't the only way, but she knew Janeway was right.

* * *

On the bridge, after she had cut the connection to main engineering, Janeway lifted her head and looked around. While the crew members at the aft station looked like they were hard at work, she knew they were too busy trying to remain professional. She couldn't say blamed them, and yet she could understand where B'elanna's negativity was coming from.

Transwarp technology was just not something Starfleet was used to dealing with, and truthfully there were just so few races out there with advanced warp propulsion methods which were superior to anything Voyager could handle, and none of them had been particularly interested in giving them any clues on how it worked.

B'elanna didn't just have the right to be concerned, she was very right because they had never used Borg technology like this before.

Janeway took a deep breath and turned to Tom, who was looking back at her attentively. "Tom, set a course for Earth and engage the transwarp us away from the Cube."

Tom wheeled himself around in his chair and instantly got to work on his console. "Aye, Captain," he said, but she could hear the anticipation in his voice, but unlike others, Tom tended to be more guarded about how he sounded.

Tuvok tapped his combadge while Tom turned the ship's bow away from the Borg Cube - personally, Janeway was glad to see the back of the Borg vessel - seeing that thing in space had not been a nice thing to wake up to every morning. "Tuvok to all hands. We are about to breach the transwarp barrier. Stand-by for acceleration."

"Transwarp in 5….4…..3….2…..1," Tom said, and they could feel the ship begin to gently shake as the ship accelerated before there was a flash of light on the screen before it changed to show a long dark green tunnel with bands of black.

Janeway closed her eyes. "The first thing to go right in a long time in the Delta Quadrant," she said, making sure Chakotay was the only one to hear her.

"Hopefully it will last," Chakotay said while keeping his own voice level.


	11. Chapter 11 Only 300 light years

I don't own Star Trek Voyager, unfortunately. If I did the abomination known as Star Trek Discovery - a great concept, just badly executed - would never have occurred.

Please enjoy.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

Voyager was only in the transwarp corridor for only a few minutes before B'elanna called up from engineering to tell them the conduit was collapsing on itself due to damage to the transwarp coil which they'd missed. But before that happened Kathryn couldn't help but admire the conduit, and the speed by which they were travelling.

Although the colours were reminiscent of the sinister interior of a Borg Cube, she could not help but admire the almost god-like speed they were travelling at. She couldn't help but wonder just how many light years they could travel through if they had enough coils to get home.

 _This_ was what she had wanted when she had told her crew at the start of the journey home, new technologies that could help them, and okay even if the transwarp coil wasn't what she'd immediately had in mind at the time, it made no difference to her now.

In the report Commander Geordi LaForge, chief engineer of the Enterprise, had written when the Federation had been threatened by the deranged Soong android Lore, who had been using a group of drones who'd been separated from the Borg group mind to fulfil his plans about the transwarp technology used by the Borg, he'd described the speed as being somewhere near twenty times greater than the Enterprise's maximum warp speed, though it was only an estimated guess since Starfleet had very little information about transwarp velocities and how they translated into the speed levels of ordinary warp ships.

Janeway didn't care; if they could just get half way to Earth, then she would be eternally grateful. Anything to just get closer to home, anything to be far from Borg territory, anything to be far from the Collective.

As Voyager travelled through the corridor, Janeway tried to guess just how many light years which would have taken between weeks, maybe even months to cross travelling at maximum warp, all travelled in a matter of seconds. Magic!

Unfortunately, it was not meant to last long, which seemed to be typical with every glorious moment they travelled through the Delta Quadrant. What made it worse was Kathryn was actually starting to hope they might actually just get half-way home. And then B'elanna's panicked voice came over the comm system.

" _Torres to Bridge; Captain, we have to shut down the transwarp coil. It's beginning to overload, and there's a chance the overload can spread into our power systems."_

"Confirmed. I'm reading a massive energy flux in the power systems," Harry reported as he quickly checked his readings before Janeway could ask if there was anything B'elanna could do to stop the overload and keep them in transwarp space, but after she heard what Harry said, Janeway's fists clenched when she heard the underlying dismay in the operations manager's voice, but she didn't have time to say anything to him right now.

"Transwarp conduit is breaking down," Tom said as he worked on his console with the aid of main engineering to bring Voyager out of the conduit safely before the overload got out of control. "Sensors are currently offline; I can't tell exactly how far we've come," Tom added in frustration.

Chakotay closed his eyes, guessing that they hadn't gotten so far after all.

Janeway turned away from the all-too familiar view of normal space and tapped her badge - just in time to overhear what sounded like an explosion over the interface, and a number of overlapping voices shouting in panic. "B'elanna? B'elanna!" Janeway shouted. If that overload had injured her crew down there….

"Captain, there has just been a plasma explosion in main engineering," Tuvok's calm and level voice cut through the hysteria.

Janeway leapt up from her seat, tapping her badge to shut down the comm line - the sounds of the voices were making it hard for her to concentrate, and besides from what she and the others on the bridge could hear, nothing filled them with confidence "Tom, resume the previous course, one quarter impulse; after what's happened, I can't see B'elanna would be happy of us using warp right now."

"Aye, Captain."

Janeway turned to Chakotay. "You have the bridge. I'm going down to engineering," she told him.

Chakotay looked into her face. She could tell just by reading his expression that he was not too happy with the thought of letting her go down to a potentially hazardous environment. _Oh, please,_ Kathryn begged him mentally, _we don't have time to debate this._

Chakotay nodded, but he leaned over, making Janeway brace herself for what he was about to say although she was pleased that he was taking precautions to make sure the rest of the bridge crew did not overhear what could potentially spiral out of control, but then she'd have expected that from him; Chakotay was an experienced commander with years under his belt, he knew better than to openly question her decisions unless he really felt it was necessary, but fortunately on this occasion he was not breaking that rule.

"I'm not happy about this, but are you sure you want to go down there?" he whispered, his eyes wide in understanding and concern.

Janeway smiled at him, reminded of why she loved this man. She leaned forward herself to whisper, "Yes. I'm going to find out just how bad things are down there eventually anyway, so why wait for the inevitable? But more importantly," she went on seriously while she placed all of her cards on the table, "I want to receive a damage report from B'elanna personally and get an idea of what its like in engineering now, rather than later."

Chakotay nodded. "Try to stay out from under B'elanna's feet," he advised.

Janeway nodded, more than familiar with her chief engineer's temper. "I'll do my best," she reassured him before she left the bridge and went down to engineering. When she stepped into the engineering section she paused over the threshold when she saw the transwarp coil, or rather what remained of it.

* * *

Kathryn Janeway had never been the artistic member of the family, she had always left that to her sister, but if there was a good image to match what she was seeing then she would almost definitely compare the remains of the coil with a clay sculpture which hadn't been successfully set in a kiln, or she would just simply compare it to one of those ice cream cones she'd used to love as a child that was melted on a hot summer's day.

The transwarp coil was a smouldering shambles; half of it was warped thanks to the overload, the metals and plastic which had made up its construction had melted so much due to the extreme and sudden heat it had been exposed too. The once immaculate cylindrical shape of the coil was gone, half of it was collapsed on top of itself. The base of the coil was the worst because most of it now covered a good portion of the floor; the entire thing had completely melted, half of it had become semi liquid and had spread across the deck before it solidified. Even as she moved towards the coil she could feel the heat still radiating from it.

The whole of the engineering staff was rushing around the coil.

"How is the plasma network?" someone asked.

"There's no damage to the dilithium chamber." When she heard that, Janeway sighed in relief. With how everything was going, the last thing they all need was damage to the dilithium chamber. Especially B'elanna. After all the work B'elanna had been doing, the last thing she needed right now on top of everything else was something worse to happen now.

"I'm getting reports from different decks; the overload has affected one or two of the replicators, and one of the holodecks. Artificial gravity on Decks 9,10, and 12 have been affected."

Janeway suddenly saw B'elanna herself walking around the coil; the half-Klingon engineer hadn't noticed her yet, but Janeway decided she wasn't going to immediately demand an update from her seeing as how she had her mind on other matters. It was clear that B'elanna was paying the last report more attention than the others.

"The replicators and the holodecks can wait," she said at last.

B'elanna wondered mentally to herself what it said about some members of her crew that they'd care more about something like a replicator and a holodeck when there were other less power intensive ways of either entertaining yourself or eating something that was not one hundred per cent real, "Carey, take a few people to those gravity plates, and find out using word of mouth if anything else is damaged. But don't come back if it's vital; we have enough problems as it is, and if someone complains about their replicator, tell them to put it on our repair list. I'm going to need everyone down here to check the power grid, but we can repair a few things on the way but not right now if they're not a priority."

Carey was already grabbing a tool kit and was gathering a few people from the engine room company to come with him. "Aye, lieutenant," he replied, mentally hoping the list wouldn't be enormous or extensive. He knew from long experience that his chief would not like it.

Janeway made her presence known to B'elanna by walking up and standing next to her. "What happened?" she asked quietly, gently touching B'elanna's arm, not wanting to distract the other woman from something so critical, but knowing she didn't have many alternatives.

B'elanna was startled by the touch, and for a moment Janeway could see a shadow of the Klingon in the half-human hybrid's eyes, ready to pull back her fist and let loose with a powerful bone shattering punch before the human side kicked in and she kicked herself for startling B'elanna.

"Sorry, B'elanna," she quickly said, "I didn't mean to startle you."

Holding back the annoyance she was feeling that someone had thought sneaking up on her when she was busy was a good idea, B'elanna sighed and she rubbed her ridged forehead. "It's okay," she said, "just try not to do it too often. I might just hit you."

"Deal," Janeway smiled though she guessed B'elanna was serious, then she became more serious herself. "What happened?'

B'elanna turned her head to take in the half melted form of the transwarp coil. "I don't know, but I've got one or two good ideas," she said in a serious but honest tone, "it was going so smoothly; we'd generated a stable transwarp conduit, and we got a lot of useful sensor information… My best guess about what happened was there is some kind of demand for a certain amount of energy because the coil began demanding a lot of power, and we couldn't handle it."

"Did you try to stop it?"

"Yes, but as the power was forced into the coil and we tried to stop, it began to send the energy back. I think it might be some type of fail-safe, a way for Borg technology to never be truly stolen."

"Are you saying the transwarp coil did _this,"_ Janeway gestured to the coil, "to itself?"

Janeway knew such things were possible. Most races always placed safeguards into their technologies as did the Federation, but she had never seen anything this extensive. She knew that some races in the Alpha Quadrant tended to fit in minor explosive charges into their technology which would detonate if they were stolen, and the owners transmitted a code on a specialised pre-set frequency, but she had _never_ heard or even encountered anything like this.

It was too extreme if this was a failsafe, and yet somehow she could see the Borg Collective using it. Most powers didn't like damaging their technology, especially if it was a critical system since it would be even harder to repair. But Janeway guessed the Borg didn't have this problem since they would either know a transwarp coil could be repaired and there were other coils in the ship to compensate, but she couldn't help but wonder what could happen if all of the transwarp coils were stolen or destroyed. Were they designed to self-destruct if they were pushed a certain way? Were they designed to destroy, or even cripple the aliens using the technology? Janeway looked around, seeing all the chaos around her, and she glanced at the damaged consoles that hadn't been lucky enough to be saved before she sent a last look at the transwarp coil.

It certainly appeared as though the Borg used that practice. If it was true, they would need to be extremely careful before they used another coil in the same way.

She shook her head and focused on the half-Klingon engineer, who seemed to know what she was thinking. "Seems like it. And if its the Borg version of the fail-safe mechanisms we place in some members of our technology, it is a bit more extreme. I've heard of cases where one Federation starship will use the prefix codes of another to bring down the shields and automatic defences down to prevent boarding when the crew have either been killed or replaced; that time where those augments led by Khan Noonien Singh captured the Reliant and attacked the original Enterprise is a text-book case of how far the Federation will go, but I've never seen anything this extensive. The coil is beyond useless. Everything inside is burnt out solid.

"I'm going to have the coil examined in the labs," B'elanna went on, folding her arms as she looked at Janeway with a tired and weary expression but Janeway could see in the other woman's eyes that she was deeply upset by the failure of what had happened. She really wanted to get them closer to home, but it had literally blown up in her face. "I want to get this properly checked out before we fix the next transwarp coil in here."

B'elanna stared at the coil's half-melted remains, her nose wrinkling as she took in the stench, cursing the Klingon sense of smell which was better than an ordinary human; it might have helped her in the past, but there were times, such as now, it was a pain.

Although she wanted to ask the engineer if it was a good idea to install a second coil, Janeway instead wrapped an arm around B'elanna's shoulder as soothingly as she could. "It wasn't your fault," she whispered, though a part of her was wondering if the transwarp coils were really worth all this, and she also asked herself if B'elanna was really planning on installing the transwarp coils again any time soon, she doubted it given how much trouble and work it was putting her and her crew on to now.

B'elanna was thankful for her captain's understanding. She was still surprised by how badly everything had gone, and she knew she would need a lot of luck to make sure it didn't happen again.

"Accidents happen, and it is like you've been saying; we don't know about transwarp technology to make it work properly. But do you think you missed something when you were repairing it?" Janeway asked.

B'elanna glared at her. "We checked _everything_ , Captain. Everything."

"I know," Janeway raised a hand to calm B'elanna down, "I'm just trying to think if it was something that was missed."

B'elanna shrugged, and Janeway felt her own arm ripple with the movement. "It could've been," she admitted before she added quickly, "but we will need to be really careful as we check it out."

Janeway nodded. Together the two women stared at the burnt out pile of synthesised metal and plastic still smouldering in front of them.

* * *

"The power grid has been brought up online, and we've finished repairing the gravity plates that were affected by the overload," B'elanna was saying a few hours later in the briefing room to the rest of the senior staff, "a few other systems were damaged. Many of the replicators themselves were overloaded, and a few of the holodecks themselves were damaged. But at the moment my engineering staff are examining every system on the ship to see the full effects of the damage."

"What about the warp drive?" Harry asked. "We've been crawling at impulse for seven hours already, and we're still in Borg space."

"That's enough, Ensign," Janeway snapped quickly when she heard Harry's voice rise in pitch as he became more emotional, and she wanted to get the entire meeting back under control. It worked because everyones' backs were drawn up by the crack of her voice. Janeway had a special bond with Harry Kim in much the same way a mother would with a son, or a grandmother would with a grandchild, and it was very rare for her to use his rank like that, and so she only used it in reserve for whenever Harry did something or said something inappropriate.

"We are going to remain, as you say, 'crawling' at impulse for as long as it takes for Lieutenant Torres to check the rest of the systems. Some of that overload affected a few of our propulsion systems, isn't that right, B'elanna?" she asked, looking up at Torres.

B'elanna nodded as she sent a quick glance over at Harry before she focused on the rest of the senior staff. "Until we've fully checked the propulsion systems, which could mean once more tearing the whole thing apart to see if the overload did any physical damage as well, we can't risk the warp engines. I don't know enough about how Borg technology works to be sure, but the overload could have spread a virus into our propulsion systems, and we can't risk it. I don't want to go to warp until I'm sure.

"While we're at it, the labs have got the transwarp coil's remains. We're having it checked out while we go over it to make sure this isn't a nasty failsafe booby trap."

Janeway nodded. "Be as quick as you can, the longer we hang around in this part of space, the vulnerable we are.'

B'elanna looked like she was a second away from biting her tongue in response to that. Instead, she simply nodded and said. "I know, we're doing our best. The engines are our number one priority. Hopefully, we should be operational again in a few more hours, but as long as we work non stop without any trouble, the work should be done quickly."

Janeway read the message there, and she nodded again in response. She would need to make sure none of the crew bothered B'elanna too much on this one.

Neelix's voice was uncharacteristically solemn. So much had happened, and so much of the normally exuberant Talaxian's energy had been bled out of him. "How far did we get before the coil burnt itself out during the overload?" he asked.

Tom sighed, "Only 300 light years."

The rest of the senior staff took it in their own natural way; Chakotay looked down at his arm, his own thoughts turned inwards but Janeway knew her lover well enough to gauge he was frustrated the distance wasn't a little more so then it would have been worth it. Janeway felt the same way, but even 300 light years was better than nothing. It was extremely rare, up until that point, for the Voyager crew to receive a means of travelling faster than their maximum warp. For it to be taken out so quickly was a blow, and it showed in the faces of Harry and B'elanna, though Harry's upset was geared more towards the fact they weren't just next door to Earth while B'elanna looked like she was kicking herself for not properly checking over the coil in the first place.

Janeway looked around the rest of the table, at the faces around her. Neelix looked like he was on the point of collapsing on the table and sobbing his heart out since he had no-where else to go, and Kes looked sad on the behalf of the rest of the crew though she didn't look like it affected her that much since her lifespan meant she would be gone a lot longer before they returned to Earth in the first place, and Janeway's heart clenched at the thought of the person she thought of as a little sister and a daughter rolled into one being dying long before she had a true chance to shine.

Tom looked troubled, but otherwise, she couldn't see what he was truly thinking on his face. He looked troubled like he wanted to get home but had been disappointed again, and yet he was not surprised by the hurdle like it was almost too good to be true.

Tuvok looked calm, but Janeway knew her old friend well enough to gather he was about a minute from losing his temper if it wasn't for all of the emotional control every Vulcan learnt from a very young age. But Janeway had seen the intensity of Vulcan emotions only once before, during that mess where Lon Suder had committed a murder and Tuvok had used a mind-meld to see what the cause was in the deranged Betazoid's mind, only to lose a good portion of his control, which could be probably explained by the linking of two minds which were otherwise telepathic in nature; just because Suder lacked the usual Betazoid ability to read minds didn't mean there wasn't something there that had the capacity even if the rest of the brain wasn't wired up that way, and it had reacted with the brand of telepathy Vulcans used.

"Tactical update?" she asked, forcing from her mind the memory of the Tuvok she had seen in sickbay during that mess so she could focus on the rest of the meeting.

"Sensors haven't detected any other transwarp signatures, however, they have picked up several biological readings but they are too far away, they are just at the edge of our sensors," Tuvok reported, "and they are travelling in the opposite direction. I will keep monitoring to ensure they are not a threat."

Janeway nodded, not all that surprised there were no Borg vessels nearby but there were bio-ships. She couldn't help but wonder if they had detected the collapse of the transwarp conduit. "Good," she said simply, but it was all that could be said at the moment.

"Good?" Harry repeated incredulously, and everyone stared at him in surprise at what he was saying. "How can it be good, ma'am," he added the last word, and Janeway had the feeling that her operations manager had only offered that last word to show he was speaking to her in respect though she was not fooled. "We are still trapped in Borg space-."

Janeway had just about had enough of this. "Good as in we are still alive," she pointed out, glaring harshly at Harry for a minute, and making the young officer realise he had crossed a line though at this point she didn't care what he was feeling at that moment. Ignoring Harry's rapidly paling face as he realised himself he had crossed a deep line, she looked around the table to expand the viewpoint, "Good that the bio-ships, although they may have detected our transwarp wake, seem to be leaving us alone. Tom," she turned to the helm officer who looked up at her instantly, clearly worried and rattled that he might be the next person to be snapped at, "continue our current course and speed. Try to put some distance between the bio-ships and us, and then we will wait," she sent another glare towards the wilting Harry, "for a few hours before we increase impulse power."

Tom nodded. "Yes, ma'am," he replied, his voice solemn.

Janeway took a deep breath. "I know this is hard," she said gently to all of the people in the room with her. "God knows I know, but we not going to do any favours getting home if we are all dead. Dismissed. Mr Kim," she added, stopping Harry from leaving with the others, "come with me to my Ready Room. I want a word."

Harry looked stricken and none of the others would meet his eyes except to send him a few sympathetic glances, but he followed her out of the observation lounge and they entered the Ready Room together. Janeway pointed to one of the seats opposite her desk and she went to sit down in her chair, but when she looked around she was annoyed Harry was still standing at attention, reminding her of their first meeting before all this unholy mess where they became trapped on the other side of the galaxy had begun.

"Sit down, Harry," she ordered gently, though she let in a little bit of steel into her voice.

Harry sat down heavily. He had been hoping to stand so then this knockdown would be less painful. But he guessed he should have expected it given how the Captain tended to have a maternal air to her nature. For a moment the pair of them stared at each other, in silence, and then Janeway broke it.

"I'm not angry with what you said, although it was inappropriate. I'm just angry you, of all people, didn't see the big picture, Harry," Janeway said, "we have travelled in the Delta Quadrant for nearly four years. This ship has suffered severe damage on more than one occasion, we've even lost more than a fair number of our friends, we've had to deal with boarders, traitors, and spies and saboteurs. And you are now annoyed that although we're still stuck in Borg space we have moved 300 light years closer to home. We might be travelling at impulse, but with those bio-ships nearby we can't risk attracting their attention. The only reason I was happy in the briefing was that although we're still in Borg space, we are still alive. I want to get home, Harry, we all do. But we're not going to do that if we are blown to atoms," she said, looking at him, begging him to see her points.

Harry looked down at his hands for a moment as he gathered up his thoughts, mentally disembowelling himself for being so thoughtless. It was obvious and as clear as day the Captain and the rest of the crew wanted to return home as much as he himself did, but the problem was he had always had the problem of tunnel vision where he could only see himself and not anyone else. It had always been a problem for him over the years, but he'd never had an experience like being trapped in the Delta Quadrant before. "I just want to get home," he said quietly, deciding that it wasn't a good idea to argue with her on that point. "I was really looking forward to travelling at transwarp speeds-.'

"We all were, Mr Kim," Janeway said, deciding to interrupt there with a bit of formality to remind the ensign of exactly where he was at the current moment and that he wasn't the only individual on the ship though, at times like this, it certainly seemed as though he did see it that way. "But let's be thankful we got something out of that coil, even if it's not what we wanted."

Harry nodded, deciding to go along with his captain's opinion though he wasn't sure if she believed it herself and just hide his own thoughts on the matter to get himself out of the mess he'd landed himself in. "Understood," he replied, pleased that she wasn't punishing him for his lack of well-chosen words or the fact he had opened his mouth in the first place.

Janeway studied him, wondering if he even knew just how close he had come to a reprimand though she decided not to bother with it given that she had far too much to do as it was already and they were in enough trouble already. Truth be told she had considered lashing out at Harry, using him to vent her temper on because she was as frustrated and as tired as he was with the seemingly never-ending nightmare they were all trapped in as they navigated their way back to the Alpha Quadrant, but she had decided against it because she had no energy for an argument.

"Alright," she nodded, "dismissed."

Relieved that no punishment seemed to be forthcoming, Harry got up and prepared to leave the Ready Room, but just as soon as he turned his back, he winced when he heard her voice again. "Oh, and Harry," she said, keeping her voice level but firm and kind like she was smiling in a manner like a leopard was about to pounce on a deer, "next time there's bad news in a briefing, don't ever lose it like that again. Do you understand?" she asked.

Harry closed his eyes and wished he had not opened his mouth in the first place, but what was done was done and there was nothing that he could do about it now. "I do," he said honestly.

He was telling the truth. He had been given a clear warning by the Captain and he knew better than to get on the wrong side of her.

"You may go."

* * *

In her quarters after the briefing of the senior staff had ended, Kes was feeling odd. And she did not know why. At first she thought the strange feelings in her stomach was just hunger, but even after she'd had a quick bite to eat from the bowl of fruit that she kept for herself in her quarters, one bunch of many which were given to the rest of the crew so when they woke up they might indulge in a snack before risking Neelix's kitchen. She might have stopped her relationship with the Talaxian when her body had been stolen during that mess with Tieran, but she still loved him, even if his culinary skills needed a bit of work.

And it worried and concerned her because she had been having these unusual feelings for some time inside her, but she couldn't explain what it was. In the end, the Ocampan woman decided to just get ready for bed, mentally reviewing the duty roster Commander Chakotay had arranged for her and knew she had a good few hours private time. She decided to use that to get some sleep, guessing that whatever it was that was wrong with her was nothing more than fatigue. But as she turned off her lights, she wondered if it would indeed be that simple on a ship she knew from long experience was anything but.

While she rested Kes thought about the events of the last few days. She was sad that the ship had only managed to cross 300 light years before the coil burnt itself out, but somehow, she had the strange feeling things would get better for all of them. Strangely she couldn't work out why, and as she fell asleep, she had the strangest feeling that the day would come very quickly….


	12. Chapter 12 Kes's Gift

I am so sorry it's taken me so long to get back and update this story. I have been very busy but I am hoping to be back now.

I don't own Star Trek, as usual.

Please let me know what you think.

This his my version of The Gift. Enjoy.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

Kes was sitting in her quarters. She had immediately returned to her quarters shortly after her duty shift ended. Usually Kes would visit some of her friends in the crew, or she would spend time with Neelix in the mess hall; while she might have broken off their relationship when she had been possessed by Tiernan, although truthfully he had only done what she had slowly started to realise; she couldn't be with the Talaxian forever but that didn't mean they weren't friendly still, but for the time being she merely wanted to be left alone so she could think.

For the last few weeks, Kes had been feeling increasingly different. At first, it had just been a feeling of oddness, but now she felt….different in her mind, not to mention her body. The most similar feeling she had felt that went hand in hand with the sensations Kes was feeling right now was when she went through the transporter, but she had never felt what she was feeling in his mind before.

This felt different. Kes didn't have the words to properly describe how she was feeling, but she felt she was becoming far more than she was. The last time Kes had felt anything like this had been during that mess with Suspiria and Tanis, who had been manipulating her into joining his Ocampan group on that array.

When she had met Tannis, who had taught her so much in such a short amount of time, although he had been lulling her into seeing her friends, including Neelix and the Doctor, as nothing but inferior beings who didn't even have the kind of telepathic and other mental abilities to understand the universe in a more intimate manner instead of relying on scanners and sensors which told them nothing.

But this was nothing like that.

Kes _had_ felt something stir in her mind then. She had always resented the Caretaker for what he had done, not just to her planet, although she was pleased he had accepted the responsibility of what his people had done, she didn't like the fact he had essentially reduced her people who had great mental abilities to a shadow of their former selves. Kes felt if she had some of the knowledge of the ancient Ocampans, she would have a better insight into what was happening with her.

Alright, granted, she wasn't entirely sure if that was true; some of the things she had done recently went beyond anything she might have heard about her ancestors.

She might not have liked or even agreed with some of Tanis' philosophy, but she did agree with him on what the Caretaker had done by keeping the status quo, while simpering fools like Toskett had followed the Caretaker's _teachings_ like some of those religious fanatics she'd encountered ever since she had left her planet and began travelling with the Voyager crew.

And she had met more than her fair share.

The alien entity had held her people back. She knew that, and she wasn't denying it. She remembered how everyone on her world had kept saying during the first few months of her life " _the Caretaker will protect us forever,"_ or " _there is no need for you to be curious enough to study our people's psychokinetic powers since they don't follow the path the Caretaker has set for us."_

And on, and on and on it had gone.

But what angered her the most was just how much her people had lost, and yet very few of them actually seemed to care. Her people had lost so much, forgotten so much. They had become so dependent on the presence of a powerful being's protection they treated him as a god without thinking that they should be continuing to explore the boundaries of their minds. In the past they had made use of their higher telepathic abilities; they had lost them simply because they had become used to the Caretaker's presence, and everyone had slowly begun to depend on the Caretaker to solve all of their problems they had lost their ability to think through a crisis. For centuries the underground cities of the Ocampans had held an increasingly stagnant culture, dependent on the Caretaker for protection and energy.

Kes breathed out thoughtfully as she thought about the energy supplies her people had been given when the Caretaker had died, although what his long term plan was if he hadn't found a worthwhile and compatible lifeform to procreate with made no sense.

How long would it have taken the entity to procreate and have a child?

How long would it have taken said child to grow?

If she had needed any more proof of just how stupid the Caretaker was, it was that. If the Caretaker had just come up with another plan instead of kidnapping ships across the galaxy for a long time, then things would have gone differently. While she was grateful for him for saving her people, Kes's sympathy for the Caretaker was limited.

The entity had forced them to become dependent on them. He had just kept the status quo, and he had stopped them from growing even if he had designed and created a place for her people to live in, but surely it would have been better and easier if their people had been moved onto a different world?

Kes had seen hundreds of Class M planets that were beautiful and were capable of supporting her people, and since Suspiria had taken her group of Ocampans to an array lightyears away, it wouldn't have been impossible to do the same for the main group.

She shook her head. Thinking of the Caretaker was one of those many things she didn't like thinking about on principle, and besides thinking of him was not going to help her. No, what she was feeling was similar to what she had felt because of Tanis, but this feeling was different. It was similar because her contact with the Ocampan group who had broken away and became more thanks to Suspiria had sharpened her mind, and she was able to see things on a different level the humans and others on Voyager from the diverse Federation had never been able to experience, but it had been brief.

This was similar, but Kes felt she could see much deeper into levels beyond the subatomic. She felt as if….as if every fibre of her being was being changed, she was able to perceive and feel things she had never felt before.

As she had told Neelix before she had thrown him across the Mess Hall by accident, she could feel matter, thought, and energy become one. She had felt everything about her, the boundaries of her flesh and blood body, her limited telepathic abilities…they were about to fall away, although she hadn't realised what it all meant at first.

Now she did.

She was undergoing some kind of transformation. Kes didn't understand it, she didn't even understand why it was happening at all, and what the long term consequences would be. At first she hadn't realised that when she had been psychokinetically summoning objects to her hand, from padds to hyposprays, but it wasn't until Tuvok had worked with her she had felt herself peering beyond the subatomic layers of reality, although it had manipulated the structure of the Vulcan meditation lamp they'd been working with in order for her to work with the flame with the power of the mind.

And then things had gotten out of control, and yet the exciting thing was every time she had unfastened the barriers she had placed around her powers when this new power came to her, she gained a better understanding of what was going on.

Unfortunately, she had begun affecting Voyager on a molecular level and she had begun to go into some kind of flux, now it was determined what was happening was not safe for herself or for Voyager, never mind the crew.

 _A transformation._

Kes had no idea what to expect, and she was both frightened and filled with a sense of awe. She had _never_ heard of any Ocampan who had gone through the same thing she was. Whatever was happening to her, it was new. Kes wondered if this was anything normal, or if it was triggered by Species 8472. Somehow she doubted they would deliberately transform any telepath nearby who hadn't been assimilated by the Borg into something new. It did occur to Kes she was evolving, but again she had no idea if that were true; she hadn't had any contact with her people on the Homeworld for a long time now, and there was no way of knowing if the Kazon had even managed to break through the security barrier.

Thinking of Home truly made her insides clench.

Kes had been so frustrated by her people. She had been tired of their lack of curiosity about the world they lived in. Yes, they lived underground, but she had _never_ understood the point behind them just bowing their heads and letting the Caretaker essentially tell them to forget their heritage and their more powerful telepathic skills. But she definitely missed them, they were still her people.

Something within her shifted.

Whatever was happening to her, it was getting more and more intense.

She knew she was going to be transforming soon, but she had no idea what was going to happen but she did know something. It was on an instinctive level.

Kes would need to leave Voyager. She had to get away from the ship, and from the crew. They were her friends, and although their relationship had been strained when she had been possessed by that insane dictator, she had gathered enough of the encounter to know even if she tried, she could not remain on the ship forever.

But in this instance…. Kes had no idea what would happen to the ship if she stayed, but after the way the growing changes in her being going…she knew she would need to leave. Her abilities to see beyond the atomic and the sub-atomic levels had given her a good idea of what was happening to the ship at such a level. If she stayed on the ship when the transformation occurred, there was a good chance Voyager itself could be destroyed.

And she didn't want that.

The crew had done so much for her, and for her people at great cost to themselves since the destruction of the Array had resulted in them being stranded here in the Delta Quadrant where they were at risk of attack from all kinds of species who either wanted to gut their ship simply because they didn't have the resources or the brains to form their own technology and believed they had to steal technology from others because they couldn't find any other way of doing it, or those who just wanted their body parts to stave off a terrible disease, or a race of Saurians so blind to their history and the idea of growing as a civilisation because they were determined to stamp out all dissenters who came up with new ways of doing things, or a race who kidnapped species and placed them in habitats while taking everything they owned.

The Voyager crew had done all that, and yet at the same time, they took so much and yet they gave so much more.

The door chimed.

Kes's smile widened when she stretched out her mind - she had never really been able to do this until recently - to find out who was outside. "Come in, Captain," she said happily.

Kathryn Janeway walked in with a quizzical smile on her face. Kes could see even without her telepathic abilities that she was curious about how she had managed to tell who it was who was on the other side of the door, but she didn't say anything.

Kes took the moment to study the other woman. The Ocampan had long since seen Janeway as a dear friend, a cross between a sister and a mother who was attentive and saw everyone like family. But she could see the definite signs of strain on Janeway's face. The recent mess where Voyager had been so seriously damaged and the crew were now hunted in this part of the galaxy by a hostile extra-dimensional race who had been roused by the Borg was clearly trying her nerves since they had attacked the ship so many times, Kes even wondered if Voyager would be destroyed.

Kes was thankful Janeway had gotten together with Commander Chakotay. While the two had their differences, they were good together. In any case, having someone to love had done wonders for them.

"You wanted to see me?" Janeway asked.

Kes shook her head. "Please come in."

Janeway smiled gratefully and sat down near Kes.

Kes narrowed her eyes at the other woman. She was trying, dearly trying, not to read the other woman's mind; it was one thing to see who was outside her quarters in both directions, but if there was one thing she had always refused to do, it was to invade the privacy of another mind. She had never liked it, and she had done her level best to not fall into the habit. She might be transforming into something beyond her comprehension at the moment, but she had no intention of breaking that rule.

"Is everything alright?" she asked while she tried very hard to not probe the other woman's mind.

"I should be the one asking you that," Janeway replied.

Kes looked away and looked down at her hands for a moment. She was trying to work out if she should just be blunt, or if she should just lead the conversation on a bit. She decided on option one. "I need to leave the ship," she replied, lifting her eyes to look Janeway in the face to gauge her reaction, although this time she could see the surprise and even sadness in the other woman's eyes.

Kes immediately shut that up. She would never break that rule.

" _Kes!"_ Janeway whispered, truly upset.

"Captain…Kathryn," she said, knowing that the use of her first name would make the human woman see things from her perspective. "I have got to leave."

"But why?"

Kes turned away for a second to try to find the right words to describe her reasons, but she decided to again just be blunt. "Everyone thinks what's happening to me…. its some kind of phenomenon. Or some medical condition. It's not."

"Kes, the Doctor is still going over his research-."

"I know," Kes's voice became sharper, but she quickly reined in her annoyance although it was hard. She would not understand why these people who were brilliant in their own way thought everything unusual could be explained as an illness. "But he's got it wrong. All of you are wrong. I'm undergoing a transformation, Captain; I don't know how it happened, why it's happening, or even _how_ it started, so don't ask. All I know is….every time my body goes through those…shifts," there was uncertainty in her voice as she tried to find the right word to just describe what happened to her body when the molecules of the ship started destabilising, "I'm opened up to a whole new plane of existence. It's only now I've only been able to see it, but I know I can't be on the ship when I transform. That's why I need to go. Every instinct I have is telling me to leave."

The surprise on the other woman's face at the unexpected news Kes was transforming into something new was still written on her face and in her mind. "When did all this start? Was it before we arrived at Borg Space?"

Kes closed her eyes. Why did the captain always have to be so stubborn? Why did she always have to think about things around her in a one-dimensional manner? "When we arrived, I don't know if the aliens sensed me, and put warnings in my brain or not, or if they even played with time itself…. all I know is ever since we arrived, my senses and my telepathic abilities have become stronger and sharpened, but when I felt the transformation coming I was as surprised as everyone else when the hyposprays came to my hands when I was going for them."

Janeway nodded. She had heard about this from different people across the ship, among other things centred around Kes, but she kept listening.

Kes saw what Janeway was doing and she smiled deep down in gratitude that she was at least been given the chance to speak. "I don't know if Species 8472 have done anything to my mind, Captain," she went on truthfully, and she had gone over it more than once. "I don't even know if this is something natural for Ocampans, like the elogium, but I've got to leave."

Janeway was surprised to hear the mention of the Ocampan equivalent of the Vulcan mating cycle. "What if it isn't true? What if you think you're transforming into something new, but you're not? I can't let you go if you've got a feeling and nothing happens."

Kes chuckled. "The thought did cross my mind, believe me." Her smile became more melancholic since she knew the other woman had just made a very good point, and she could see things from Kathryn's perspective.

But if she were honest…. Kes had been having serious doubts about her place on Voyager for a long time. Her experiences with being possessed by Tiernan had continued to have an effect on her life every day since.

She had been possessed by a dictator who had wanted to cause so much pain and destruction he had been willing to take over other people's bodies just to stay alive so he would remain in power.

But he had made an impression and he had pointed out things in her mind which she had just accepted. A part of her realised that life on Voyager was in some ways no different to how she had lived when she had been on home; she was locked doing the same things day after day, but while she was happy she had grown as a person, she wanted so much more.

"In any case, this is my decision. I've come to know you well over the last few years, and I know you'd never just lock me up if I tried to force the issue."

Janeway didn't look convinced still.

Kes placed a hand on her chest. "Captain, I'm still the same old me. I am not under the influence of the aliens, or anything else. Everything inside of me is screaming to leave because I know if I don't I will be a danger to the crew. I don't want that. It's my fate, would you really try to stop me?

"No," Janeway uttered a sobbing breath as this whole conversation was starting to get to her; Kes regretted what effect this whole conversation was doing to her friend, but she had to see this through. "I would argue with you, plead with you to stay."

"It won't work. Captain, I'm the same person you've always known. I haven't lost my judgement. I haven't been placed under the influence of aliens. I'm still me, and I can sense something great happening and I have to see it through," Kes looked imploringly at her friend.

Janeway was silent as she listened to Kes's speech, tears sparkling in her eyes. The Ocampan felt guilty about what she was saying, and for a moment she considered just reading the other woman's mind and seeing what was being decided in her mind, but she just about managed to control the urge. "Voyager has been your home; you've lived here most of your life," Janeway whispered, and Kes smiled as she remembered the many good times and the equally many bad times she had been on board this ship. "You've been a vital part of this family for so long."

Kes smiled at her, she had always loved the observation of the Voyager crew being a family, full of people from so many backgrounds and species. From the Maquis crew members who had been forced to become part of the ship when Chakotay's fighter had been destroyed in that battle with the Kazon, to the Federation crew who had differing ideas about their new Maquis crewmates. The two crews had become stout friends and had become important and vital in their own right.

Kes had her doubts about herself being vital. All she had done was become the Doctor's nurse and become a medic, something she enjoyed doing especially since she had come to see the Doctor as a person and had helped the hologram grow into his own person, and she had arranged for the creation of the airponic garden.

Janeway's lips were trembling, and she reached out a hand hesitantly and stroked Kes's chin. "I'm going to miss you," Janeway finished.

Kes leaned forward and hugged the other woman, feeling Janeway wrap her in her arms tightly as if afraid of letting go, but finally she did.

"I need to tell the Doctor," a sad smile crossed her face as a thought occurred to her.

Kes smiled as Janeway cupped her face, knowing the Doctor was not going to like this any more than she had.

"He won't be happy-," Kes was just saying when she felt it happening, a surge of power spreading through her body. She had started to compare it to a similar sensation to going through the transporter, but it was so much more than that and she could not describe it. In her peripheral vision, Kes saw the look on Janeway's face.

"It's starting," Kes whispered while she mentally timed how long she had. She could feel it coming so fast Kes had trouble holding the transformation back. She was so busy holding back the worst of the effects which were coming in surges she didn't really hear Janeway speaking to Chakotay.

"….es is leaving us," the sadness in Janeway's voice went through Kes.

"Come on," Janeway gently but firmly picked Kes up and pushed her out of the room.

XXX

The problem with the transformation came quickly since Kes was having trouble concentrating on holding onto her form - her best guess, later on, would be she had been subconsciously holding onto her humanoid form for as long as she could, but now she was leaving she felt she no longer needed to bother - while Janeway held on to her and ushered her through the corridors.

"Come on," she said, "we're almost there."

Kes looked around briefly, relieved they were now closer to the shuttle bay, and yet it was still so far away. She felt something stirring inside of her.

"Captain, I-I can't hold-," she tried to say, but there was a surge before a part of the wall exploded, knocking both herself and her friend to the ground.

Kes lost her concentration and her control but there was another explosion in the same area. The Ocampan closed her eyes and drew on the work she and Tuvok had embarked on since she had expressed a desire to explore her abilities since there was no other way she could do it; the Vulcan had done a great deal to help her and he had taught her many things about her self control, but she had no idea how much of it she could put into effect since this was far from the Vulcan's experience.

As she worked on trying to delay her transformation, Kes became away of everything around her on both the atomic and sub-atomic levels. She could see the molecules of the bulkheads, how the molecules of the plasma grid-connected every system in this section. No, this whole ship like the veins and arteries in a humanoid body. She gasped in awe as her mind couldn't help but drift through this new plane of reality which was so close to their own normal reality.

Unfortunately, the experience alone nearly made her lose whatever self-control she had left. She could feel the molecular bonds vibrate in her presence and push away. She gasped when she saw what she was doing was causing more damage than ever, and she had very nearly lost her control because of her desire to just explore this new world.

"….old fashioned way," she heard Janeway say just as she was reeling her control back in and trying to stop the transformation from really taking hold of her beyond her ability to stop it. _What have I missed now?_ Kes asked herself as she was led down the corridors, knowing Janeway had been speaking to the bridge but because she'd had trouble focusing on the conversation and she didn't dare waste any energy in stopping the transformation from taking hold so she couldn't ask the captain about what was happening.

As they passed through the corridors, Kes winced as her control slipped again, and she felt the explosions taking place behind her as the molecular structure of the walls exploded. Kes's heart was banging in her chest as she was forced along by Janeway towards the shuttle bay. As they approached a turbo lift the doors opened and Tuvok stepped out. The Vulcan briefly surveyed the corridor before he noticed them. Kes could see the concern radiating off of the Vulcan and she felt her own self-control breaking down.

"Tuvok," she whispered, uttering the word, completely exhausted after she had spent so long holding back the worst of this transformation and was still only just holding on. She felt the control shift, and she could feel her body falling apart before she reined in back. "I can't keep going," she went on, feeling like she was going to transform beyond anyone's ability to stop it.

She was going to transform here on Voyager.

She had no doubt in her head the transformation would not do wonders for the ship, in fact, she was sure the entire ship and everyone on board were going to die in the effects of the transformation.

They had lost so much. They had endured so much, just to get home. And now, because of her, they were all going to die. Kes closed her eyes as she tried to use that knowledge to help her push the transformation back just a touch-

That was enough for Tuvok. He moved so quickly even Kes's new abilities missed it and he felt her take hold of her head in a gentle embrace while he placed his fingers on her face in a familiar grip.

"I will attempt to initiate a mind-meld to help you control the transformation," Tuvok said.

Kes closed her eyes as she felt her friend and mentor's familiar telepathic presence in her head. Together they faced down the wave that was the transformation. Kes concentrated. She used her fear of what would happen to the Voyager crew to fuel her attempts to force the transformation back. Tuvok helped by adding his own in exhausted mental strength to the struggle.

"Our minds are one," Kes heard the strain in Tuvok's mind and she fought to dredge up the remaining atoms of strength inside her body to help him while she felt he was doing his best to help her. "Our thoughts are one…."

Kes closed her eyes and listened to Tuvok as he urged her to take control, but she was too busy concentrating to force the transformation back. She just hoped Tuvok was up to the challenge; this was not easy. To her relief, Kes and Tuvok managed to push it back off of her.

The effort proved too much for Tuvok, and he was forced off of her until he was leaning on the wall.

"Go!" he urged.

Janeway hurried Kes on towards the shuttle bay, but the Ocampan felt much better as she went on her way before she got into the shuttlecraft. Janeway helped her to the pilot seat, slamming a hand onto the controls to start up the start-up sequence and to prepare to leave the ship on automatic. Kes was thankful for her help since it saved her the trouble, but now she was inside the shuttle she was having to shore up her remaining energy to pushing the transformation off for another few minutes at least until she was aware from Voyager.

Once she was sure the shuttle was programmed, Kes turned to Janeway. "Thank you, but you'd better go," she whispered while she tried to inject some of her usual calm manner into her voice.

Janeway nodded but she paused as she looked at Kes sadly as if she were trying to implant this memory into her mind since, as far as they knew, this would be the last time they would ever meet. Kes hoped that wasn't true, but she had to accept the possibility. At the same time, she regretted it, but it was true. She also regretted not saying goodbye to her friends, but there was nothing she could do.

"Kes," Janeway said before she left.

"Yes?" Kes looked up, wondering just how long she was going to have to wait before she left.

"Good luck," Janeway said before she quickly jumped off of the ramp which closed after her just as the shuttle bay door opened and the automatic controls kicked in.

Kes closed her eyes for a moment. _Just a little bit further,_ she thought to herself before she checked the navigational sensors. She saw the distance between the shuttle and Voyager was growing each second. She tapped on the controls to stop the ship, bringing it to a halt. At the same time, she opened a communications channel with the ship while she stopped trying to block off the transformation and let it wash over her like an avalanche.

"It's….it's happening. I can feel it, surging through me…..," she said as she felt everything that was her start to break down. She took a moment to look inward so she could truly work out how she felt, but it was impossible.

All she could see and feel…. Kes felt so powerful, she felt she could do anything. She was lost in her euphoria for a moment she didn't realise her transformation was turning her into a being of light and energy. She felt her mind stretch seemingly endlessly through space. She could feel the solar winds spreading through space. She felt particles of space dust which had been travelling for aeons drifting through space. She was spreading her mind throughout the region on levels no sensor, no technology could detect. She could feel the minds of Voyager; she had always been telepathically aware of the rest of the crew, and she had gone out of her way to keep them from being uncomfortable about being in her presence because she could read their minds.

But now she could just take a peek inside their minds without really trying, and she was gentle. She read their fear, their uncertainty, their desire just to get home. She felt a few of them feel resentment towards Captain Janeway for several things; getting them all into this mess in the first place, the loss of a friend, things like that.

Kes could understand the resentment.

She understood Captain Janeway desired to help people who were in trouble, but at the same time, her impulsive attitude made it very hard for her to accept some might not actually want it.

Kes pushed those thoughts aside as she realised there was something she could do, and the thought and the means just came to her and seemed so obvious she felt there seemed to be nothing she couldn't do, and her transformation wasn't even finished yet.

"My gift to you," she said, her last words to the crew. She let down the final dams she was using to hold the transformation back, and the energy surged through her….

And Kes left the physical realm.


	13. Chapter 13 9,500 light-years

I am so sorry I haven't updated in a long time, but anyway I hope you enjoy this latest chapter.

As usual, I don't own Star Trek in any way, although if I did the abomination known as Star Trek Discovery would either never have happened, or would have been completely different.

Let me know what you think.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

Janeway had just returned to the bridge a few minutes before the entire bridge crew watched as the shuttle which had travelled a good distance away from Voyager itself flashed like an ancient lighthouse which had once guided in seafaring vessels and crews into a safe harbour before it suddenly exploded with bright blinding light.

She had been listening quietly to the reports, her scientifically trained mind trying to work out what the transformation Kes had explained was what was happening to her which accounted for all the strange phenomena happening to her recently, while also comparing it to the Starfleet accounts of similar phenomena, but none of them mentioned anything of the sub-atomic bonds of a body falling apart.

When she had witnessed Kes's body shimmer and warp with light, rendering her body semi-translucent and walked the Ocampan girl through the corridors which exploded in their wake as the transformation had affected the sub-atomic bonds of the ship itself, Janeway had wondered if what Kes was undergoing was similar in some ways to the evolutionary transformation of the Zalkonian transformation encountered by the Enterprise, but she had instantly dismissed it.

That transformation had been a natural process. In any case, the Zalkonian Dr Crusher had met and treated had some degree of control over his extraordinary abilities and while some moments of the Zalkonian transformation had been clearly painful, they hadn't shaken the Enterprise up.

"Report!" Chakotay demanded when the ship began to shake.

"Some sort of subspace field has enveloped the ship," Paris replied, instantly wrestling with the helm controls. "I can't break free."

"That subspace field is too strong," Harry said.

"Where's it coming from?" Janeway asked. "Could Kes have generated it somehow?"

"It just appeared, Captain," Harry said, his tone making it clear he was as baffled as they all were. "It's incredibly powerful, and judging from sensor readings the field is digging down into the lower subspace domains. And as for Kes.… well, since she could manipulate the subatomic, something like this shouldn't be too difficult."

"The lower domains?" Janeway whistled in spite of her self discipline. Subspace theory indicated there was an infinite number of domains. Subspace was essentially a honeycomb of domains, and there were dozens of propulsion theories which stated it was possible to manipulate one of those domains, but the tricky part came from the method and the power formula. "Incredible!"

" _Torres to Bridge, the warp core is going crazy down here!"_ B'elanna's voice shouted from the com line, but they could all hear the strain in the chief engineer's voice while she struggled to get everything back under her control, but she clearly wasn't having that much luck. But Janeway heard something else in the background, a low rumbling sound that was all too familiar to her ears and had been a reassuring sound for her ever since they had arrived in the Delta Quadrant.

But now there was something up with the warp core.

" _Matter-Antimatter reaction at 102%…..110%…..120!"_

Janeway's neck ached with the sudden twist as she shared a shocked look at Chakotay, who was equally shocked by the announcement from main engineering. What B'elanna had just described…it was impossible, and it went against all the laws of subspace physics the worlds of the Federation had pioneered and expended great resources in order to design and build newer, more powerful engines capable of greater speeds in order to cross interstellar, and hopefully in time, intergalactic distances.

"Captain, look! The view screen!" Harry yelped as there was a flash of light and suddenly the ship accelerated forwards with the stars streaking past so fast that the streaks seemed to merge with each other. It was like warp drive, only faster. Janeway watched the view screen silently while she held onto the arms of her command chair, hoping the inertial dampeners didn't give out under the strain the acceleration was putting on them.

This reminded her of the time where she had been onboard the Cochrane when it had been augmented to break the maximum warp barrier, but somehow this was different but she hoped neither herself nor the rest of her crew was reduced to evolved salamanders again.

"This can't be right," Tom's voice drew her attention to the helm station, where Tom's hands were dancing over the controls. "Our speed-," he began but he stopped; clearly whatever he had seen from his displays was so weird and unthinkable Tom was having problems even saying what it was. "Its…it's impossible!"

"Give us an idea of what impossible means, Tom," Janeway called.

Tom looked over his shoulder, but because of the shaking bridge and the dim lighting it was hard for Janeway to really see his expression, but she knew him well enough to know from what she could see he could not believe what was going on. "We've just hit the maximum warp barrier, Captain," Tom answered, "and we're going even further."

"What?" Janeway gasped.

"How much faster are we going to go?" Chakotay demanded.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Tom stabbed futilely at the controls of his station, though what he hoped to achieve, Janeway didn't know, she surmised he was trying to find some way of getting the ship back under control but from the look of what he was doing, he was doing it halfheartedly because he simply had no idea what was happening. "I'd get the Doctor to run some serious tests on us once this is overall the same, just to be on the safe side."

Janeway nodded to herself in agreement, hearing the grim tone in Tom's voice. Tom was never likely to forget the time he had mutated into a salamander-like life form when they'd experimented with warp 10, and how he had kidnapped her. But as she thought about it, she had to admit there was something strange.

When she had been inside the Cochrane with Tom and passed the maximum warp barrier, Janeway had experienced much the same experience Tom had when he had passed the threshold the first time around. She had been everywhere thanks to the Infinite Velocity property of warp 10, and yet she hadn't moved an inch as the shuttle had accelerated.

But this time…

This time she wasn't everywhere in the cosmos. She was still sitting in the command chair, on Voyager's bridge. All around her were the rest of her crew who had been dragged into the Delta Quadrant thanks to the Caretaker and his dubious attempts at breeding so he could have a replacement to keep the Ocampans limited and incapable of doing anything for themselves without wondering if that was what their all-mighty God-like protector would have wanted in the long run.

Janeway was snapped out of her thoughts when she heard critical alarm sirens. As if he were a telepath and had picked up on her fears, Harry called out, "We're coming apart."

Janeway wasn't surprised. While Voyager was designed for high warp speeds - well, high as according to the Starfleet specs at the time when Voyager had been launched, and as they had pushed the ship during its shakedown cruises (she would not think about the misery and humiliation she had felt when they'd had to send out a distress call when the ship had stalled in space, requiring the Hood to rescue them), they had determined the inertial dampeners were capable of handling really high speeds, but those velocities were properly regulated and controlled for the ship. But now…this….this was like Voyager were a stone being hurled to skip over the surface of the water, skimming the top without sinking until it lost velocity.

Suddenly the ship started to slow down until whatever it was they had been in lost its power, and the ship had returned to impulse speed.

"We've just dropped out….whatever it was we were in," Tom reported while the rest of the bridge returned to normal after being thrown God knew how far.

"Systems are coming back online," Chakotay checked the monitor between himself and Janeway.

 _Yes, but where are we now? We were thrown quite a long way…_ Janeway thought to herself. She didn't bother asking right away just how far they had travelled. She could ask that in a moment when the navigational sensors which were probably recalibrating after the ship had been thrown across a large expanse of space, right now she had something else on her mind.

"On screen," she ordered.

The image on the screen changed. It was showing the image of a large gaseous nebula glowing with purple light. There was nothing else in the background of the screen. No ships, no asteroids, no planets. Just a nebula.

"Where are we?" Janeway asked.

"9.500 light-years from where we just were," Tom replied once he had checked the helm and navigational instruments which were probably checking their position against where they had been before.

Janeway gasped. With all the work B'elanna and her engineering staff had been forced to do in order to repair the damaged warp core, they had needed to travel slower than normal, but while the transwarp coils had been more than enough to get them moving, they hadn't moved this far before. But 9,500 light years…. Janeway quickly did the math, and she smiled in surprise over what Kes had done.

"She's thrown us out of Borg space. Ten years closer to home."

9,500 may not be an impressive distance if they discovered a means of getting across the Delta Quadrant that still lay ahead of them, but it was a start and she would gladly take it any time.

"But how? How did she do this?" Harry asked in disbelief.

"I don't know," Janeway replied, her mind going over what had just happened before she drew a blank. "But let's be grateful she's thrown us out of Borg space."

Thinking of the Borg spoiled this little victory in their journey back home to the Federation and the Alpha Quadrant. As far as they knew there was still a war going on, and it was getting worse and worse every day even though sympathy for the Borg Collective was extremely limited. But after seeing for herself what the war was doing to the Borg….

Janeway had no idea what Species 8472 had been doing to the Borg recently, but she was in two minds about it now. _I don't get it. I should be over the moon we're no longer in Borg space, risking our lives trying to get through so we can get home, and I am…so why am I still worried it's not over just yet?_

XXX

Janeway stood looking out into the black void of space in the observation lounge while she awaited the rest of the senior staff - she had arrived here a few minutes ago, just so she could be left on her own, so she could sort things out in her mind while she formulated plans and counter plans for the long term future.

For the first time in a while, she felt some of the tension and fear she had been feeling ever since the day they'd discovered the mummified remains of the Borg drone which was one of the first signs they were travelling dangerously close to Borg territory fade.

They were out of Borg space, thrown out by the power of Kes's transformation; Janeway wished Kes' transformation had been carefully studied and watched so they could understand it a little better. It infuriated the hell out of the scientist in Janeway they'd had someone on board the ship who had been transforming into something new, something more, and yet they hadn't joined the dots.

But she was still nervous.

While she had joined in with the crews' delight they'd been thrown out of Borg space, Janeway's fear had been replaced with a new fear. It could be summed up in just one question.

What was going to happen next?

They may have been thrown out of Borg space, sent farther than they had before and morale was high because they were ten years closer to home, to the Alpha Quadrant, but they still had a long voyage ahead of them. They were still at risk; they had no idea what was ahead of them, and Neelix had never come this far, so there was no way he could guide them as he had in the past, and warn them of any nasty pieces of history of different star systems they'd likely come across.

Janeway could say they were Starfleet explorers who followed in the tradition of legendary explorers like Jonathan Archer, Christopher Pike, and James T. Kirk, but those officers had always had the lifeline Starfleet Command had available, and they'd had allies in the Vulcans before the Federation was formed, so they had more opportunities available.

Here, they were on their own. They had made a few friends in their travels, but they were far behind them now, and they had no idea what was ahead of them. To make things worse, the Federation had no idea they were here in the Delta Quadrant at all (that business with the Romulan Telek R'Mor and the Harry Kim wormhole didn't count; with relations between the Federation and the Romulan Empire, the chances were remote Telek could get their letters to the Federation at all, and in any case, even if they had gotten through, the Federation would be as stuck as the Voyager crew in working out a means of communication, never mind figuring out a plan to get them home, but unlike the crew, they'd have the resources and the best scientific brains in the Federation to think of a plan, but Janeway wasn't going to get her hopes up), and they couldn't contact home at all.

Thinking of home, the Harry Kim wormhole even if it had been nothing more than another dead end, made Janeway think of something else they could have taken advantage of.

That mess with the Aeon time-ship commanded by Braxton. Janeway still wondered what in the name of God had convinced that alternate version of Braxton (God, temporal mechanics…she had long since decided not to even try to work out how it worked, but even her shaky grasp had been surprised someone from a later century had planned to destroy her ship without realising doing so would likely result in a paradox he had started) to attack them, but they had had the perfect opportunity to leave something behind somewhere where Earth pioneers would find it, something that would appear in the 24th century.

Janeway looked down with a bitter smile, remembering how she had planned to return to her century by making use of the slingshot method pioneered by the Enterprise crew a hundred years ago, but Braxton had stopped them and gave them an excuse of altering history if they had remained, and it made Janeway wonder and ask herself about the role in history Voyager played, even though she had known it would have been a waste of her time bothering to ask the time-traveller anything.

What were they going to discover? Did they make it back to Earth at all, or did some calamitous disaster strand the crew in the Delta Quadrant and they were forced to wait for the first major exploration missions into this half of the galaxy by the Federation? Q had hinted when he had boarded the ship in order to lock Quinn back in custody for eternity humans wouldn't arrive in the Delta Quadrant for another century, but did they make it back?

Voyager had been in the Delta Quadrant for a few years, but they had discovered a great deal. They had met new species, they had charted a great chunk of the Delta Quadrant although they hadn't travelled to all of it because of their fixed mission to return to the Federation in one piece, encountering phenomena no-one had dreamt of, so when they returned because she refused to give up no matter what then their knowledge would become invaluable to Starfleet explorers.

But she was still worried because they had no idea what kind of effect the war Species 8472 was having on the Borg, and where and when the aliens would strike next.

And they were going to strike. Ever since she had boarded that Cube, saw the damage the alien invaders had caused to the Collective, Janeway had asked herself if she was looking at the shape of things to come.

She was snapped out of her thoughts when the doors swished open and her command crew came in, and she turned to greet them.

"Sit down everyone," she ordered, taking her own seat. "Report."

Tom exchanged a look with the others before he turned his attention back to her. "I've performed a long-range scan, Captain," he said, "there are three M-class star systems, seven light-years away. It looks like at least three of them are inhabited."

"I can provide limited warp capabilities for us to get there," B'elanna gave her input now. "Whatever Kes did, it worked wonders; the warp engines are now online, but I would still like time to work on them to get them back up to specs, and hopefully in a new system we can find the materials to repair them properly."

Janeway mulled it over in her mind, and she nodded in approval. "Okay, that sounds good. Keep us at a fairly moderate warp speed," she added, "the solar system isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and the journey will give us plenty of time to send out long-range probes to give us an idea of the lay of the land. We're going to do this properly."

Chakotay frowned. "What do you mean?" he asked curiously.

"In the past, we had advice from Neelix and the few friendly traders and travellers we came across," Janeway paused while she sent a look in the direction of the Talaxian. Neelix was startled out of his morose thoughts at Kes' departure, and he looked at her curiously, surprised he had been mentioned. It was clear to anyone Neelix was shaken by Kes leaving them even if they hadn't been together for a while, they were still dear friends. Now she was gone, he was alone, and Janeway felt so sorry for him.

"We don't have that right now. Our knowledge of this sector of space is nonexistent, despite Stellar Cartography, so we're going to be doing everything from scratch. But we're not just going to keep going. Voyager needs a proper overhaul, and I want the ship to be in top condition. I know," she held up her hands against the protests, "I know it's a long job, but in the long term we need to do this, rather than be on the move all the time."

"What if there's a hostile species ahead?" Harry asked plaintively.

Janeway was beginning to wonder if the young ensign was always this pessimistic. "Then we will have to be careful, won't we? I won't deny there is a risk," she went on, regarding all of them. "But we're going to have to take it. Tom," she began, glancing at the pilot, "when you scanned those systems that looked like they were inhabited, did they show signs of having interstellar travel?"

"One did," Tom began thoughtfully, "the other two didn't."

"Then we're going to head for the nearest system. On the way, we can conduct more scans and long-distance surveys, launching long-range and short-range probes in order to discover what's nearby. When we get there, we can get to work on the ship," Janeway declared, looking around the room, thinking about any other plan she could make. She sighed and shook her head. "We are going to have to make plans later. It's too early right now, but for the time being, we must travel at slow speed, send out the probes, and get the results in so we can formulate the right plans for later."


	14. Chapter 14 A Split in the Borg

I don't own Star Trek Voyager, you should know the drill by now.

Please let me know what you think, I want feedback.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

Four Months after Kes flung the ship…

"Red alert! Captain Janeway to the Bridge!" Harry Kim leapt out of the command chair just as the red alert sirens blasted through the ship when he saw what was on the main viewscreen, knowing that as soon as they heard the alarm the whole crew would be preparing for a battle whether they liked it or not. Parts of the ship would be cordoned off, main engineering would be locking off vulnerable equipment and systems.

Janeway and Chakotay both came out of the ready room together. "Report," Janeway ordered as soon as she stepped out of the ready room.

"We've detected a Borg Cube. It just came out of nowhere before we even knew it was there," Harry was tense as he looked on the screen as the approaching gunmetal grey cube which had become the stuff of nightmares in the Alpha Quadrant very quickly, especially following the massacre of Wolf 359.

Janeway took a moment to study the screen, and she genuinely did not like what she was seeing. The Borg Cube, which was showing extreme amounts of battle damage following the war with Species 8472 but was still more than a threat to Voyager, was streaking towards them incredibly quickly. Almost too quickly.

"They're in a hurry," she commented worriedly. "It looks like they're desperate to get to us."

She had been hoping to avoid the Borg even though she knew it was futile; while they had bypassed Borg territory, there were bound to be more vessels and planets between them and the Alpha Quadrant. It had been four months since they had reached the safety of the distant solar system they had been close to following Kes' flinging them 9,500 light-years out of Borg space.

The solar system had been inhabited, by an extremely primitive species which had not even developed fire or the wheel, never mind space technology of any kind. It had been child's play to find a decent place to land Voyager safely, and for four months they spent working on the ship with whatever raw materials they could find. In that time they had mapped out the local quadrant as far as their probes could go while they repaired and worked on their ship, taking advantage of the lessened danger now they were out of Borg territory to do the work gradually instead of quickly as they had on the rogue planet.

They had recently left the solar system behind after using it to refit as much of Voyager as they could within a short possible timeframe and they had resumed their course to the Alpha Quadrant.

In any case, they had been more ready to fight off _Species 8472_ especially since they'd won the conflict. The aliens planned to purge the galaxy of all life, probably as punishment for the Borg conflict. But Janeway had hoped they would be on the move, giving them the time they needed to come up with a decent, worthwhile plan to stop the aliens.

The Cube opened fire, suddenly space was alight with green energy as the torpedoes were fired at Voyager.

"Shields up! Full evasive!" Janeway yelled as her brain raced for solutions to handle the Borg attack, but she was shocked as well as surprised; the Borg Cube had fired those torpedoes before they were even within range of Voyager. That was not like the Collective. They preferred being up close and personal so they wouldn't waste their resources.

She had to hold onto the armrests of her chair to keep in her seat as Tom flung the ship into full evasive action to avoid the torpedoes. One hit the shields, but the rest didn't impact.

"Shields down to 91%," Tuvok reported.

Janeway nodded, cheering inwardly that

"Tom, engage warp engines. Maintain course. Maximum warp!" Chakotay ordered.

"Aye, sir," Tom's hands flew over the controls in front of him. There was a small but noticeable shudder as Voyager jumped into warp speed, but no-one on the bridge was relaxed. They knew only too well that the Borg, despite the battering they had gotten from their extra-dimensional enemies, were incredibly powerful, and their ships were capable of crossing the galaxy within hours. What they were doing would be no problem for the Borg to handle.

"The Borg are in pursuit," Tuvok checked his sensors.

"Maybe, but it gives us time to-," Janeway started to say before the ship rocked under the impact of weapons fire. There was a flash of light directly behind the command chair as a console sparked.

"The Borg are firing on us again, far more repeatedly than before," Tuvok replied, sounding bemused as well as worried; Janeway chalked it down to her long experience of knowing the Vulcan security chief to be able to work that out. "Shields down to 87%."

More consoles sparked behind Janeway and she winced as she felt a flash of heat behind her as the ship rocked under the violent attack.

"Captain, the Borg ship is doubling their firepower with each shot," Tuvok reported as he held on for dear life as the ship buckled under the impacts while consoles exploded, sending crew members to the ground with serious injuries. Janeway looked at the body of one of those crew members she had sworn to protect and return home to their families, hoping and praying none of her people died today.

But she was shaken by what Tuvok had just reported.

The Borg were increasing their firepower with each shot, why? What was the point? What was going on?

Ordinarily, Janeway would have ordered a channel to be opened to an attacking ship with the hope a few questions would answer her questions, but she knew there was little point here, especially if the Borg were being so aggressive.

" _Torres to Bridge, we can't take much more of this!"_

"What's your status down there, B'elanna?" Chakotay asked over the din they could hear from the communications line.

" _Not good! One of the last torpedoes struck us right near one of the impulse manifolds. I've got all my engineers working on the problem to reroute and bypass the coupling network to keep our speed constant, but if this keeps up we won't have a ship moving again."_

Janeway's crew had worked long and hard on repairing the ship. They had practically torn the ship apart to put her back together, and now all their hard work was being blasted out of the nearest airlock. Janeway could hear the anger buried deep beneath the surface of B'elanna's voice, which was easy to detect if you had spent as much time working with her as Janeway had.

Right now her mind was racing as she tried to think of what they could do.

"Do we have any of that Crimson Death in stock?" she asked, remembering one of the newer weapons of their questionable arsenal while remembering that their studies of Borg technology and spacecraft engineering had made it clear the Borg employed nanotechnology in the construction and the maintenance of their ships. It had been observed in the past the Borg ships had the means of regenerating themselves, using the nanoprobes to fix their hulls.

And at the same time, she hoped no-one remembered how in the meeting discussing different tactics and weapons they could use against the Borg they recalled how she had raised doubts a nanoprobe weapon would have any effect on a Cube.

Chakotay blinked in surprise at the question. "I think we have a few canisters worth," he replied.

"Good, what do you think B'elanna?" Janeway asked, knowing B'elanna was still on the line.

" _It might work, Captain. I have been working on the nanoprobes to make them stronger. But I don't know for sure if the canisters we have will make much of an impact on the cube."_

Janeway thought the matter through. "On Earth, Africianised honey-bees would infiltrate ordinary beehives. The result was they turned the ordinary bees more aggressive. What if we could reprogram the nanoprobes to reprogram the probes that make up the Borg ship's hull, and made them eat the cube?"

"Wouldn't that require a lengthy period of time to reprogram the probes?" Tuvok asked from his station while the ship rocked with more explosions and impacts.

"Not necessarily," Harry yelped as the controls behind him erupted with sparks.

" _Harry's right; we've been working on the probes in our spare time. I wanted to use the nanoprobes the Doctor drew out of that Borg corpse for the Crimson Death to use them as a kind of self-repair system, but while I'd worked out a way of reprogramming the probes by the dozen I hadn't refined the process to the point where we could reprogram all of them."_

Janeway thought about it. "You said you could reprogram the probes by the dozen, that means you can reprogram enough in one go?"

" _Pretty much!"_ B'elanna said after a moment; the communications line made everyone wince when they heard a number of explosions in main engineering. Janeway winced knowing that B'elanna was likely too preoccupied to reprogram the probes.

"Good," Janeway said. "Can anybody else reprogram the probes."

"I can, Captain." Heads turned towards Harry, and he looked mildly sheepish while Janeway mentally kicked herself for not bothering to look for others who were aware of the work.

"Good. Reprogram as many probes as you can before we launch two of the canisters. We'll beam them off of the ship, and they should spread past the Borg's shields because they'll alter their energy fields to get through. Once they're on the hull, we want them to reprogram the nanoprobes on the Borg Cube's hull to eat piece by piece," Janeway said while Harry got to work.

" _Yeah, that might work, But I've thought of a snag."_ B'elanna chimed in while she somehow managed to hold onto the communications line while over her shoulder they could hear her yell, " _Lockdown that conduit! Shut down that part of the plasma network before we get leaks!"_

"What kind of snag?" Janeway struggled not to wince at the thought of the damage her ship was taking, and strain B'elanna and her staff were taking.

" _This is a very tall order, Captain; while we can do it, it's going to be very close. In any case, the nanoprobes we send at the Cube might not damage enough of the ship in time,"_ B'elanna replied.

"We have to risk it. In any case, the Borg rely heavily on their nanotechnology. That ship is literally bursting with them," Janeway said. "Don't forget, nanotechnology works extremely fast. We may see results quickly."

The ship rocked again, harder this time as the Borg ship fired a volley of torpedoes and disruptor fire.

"I recommend we do this quickly, Captain. Our shields are dropping further with each impact. They are now at 71%, and dropping," Tuvok reported.

After what seemed like an eternity, Harry reported he had successfully reprogrammed a number of nanoprobes to carry out the risky counterattack against the Borg. "Get the canisters to transporter room 3," Janeway ordered Chakotay who went away to carry out the order before she hurried over to Tuvok. "Mr Tuvok, we're going to have to time this incredibly carefully," she told her old friend, momentarily wishing shield technology allowed transportation through the field layers of the shields, but she reminded herself that if that happened then it would be pathetically simple for invaders to beam through them.

The Vulcan looked up from his console. "The canisters are in the transporter room. Dropping them….now!"

Janeway watched as the Vulcan officer's hands literally danced over the controls, recognising the movements as commands to shut down the shields while using his security clearance to carry out the order when the computer made it clear the procedure was not recommended. He was soon through and he was accessing the transporter controls before he brought the shields back up.

But the moment the shields went back up, the alarm sounds coming from the tactical station drew her attention.

"What's wrong?" Janeway looked frantically at Tuvok, while her mind tried to identify the alarms, but the problem was one alarm sounded like another.

"Captain," Tom's voice was a frantic shout. "We've just dropped out of warp. The field just collapsed, and our impulse drive has collapsed as well. We're stuck in space."

"How did this happen?" Janeway demanded.

"Captain, the Borg have fired a weapon that has just collapsed the warp field. It is likely similar to the weapon they used on the Enterprise D when Q flung the ship into the path of that cube," Tuvok reported grimly while Janeway remembered the report. She kicked herself for not thinking of a way around the problem, but truthfully the Borg had only used the weapon once, during their initial encounter with the first Cube. At the same time, she wished she could summon Q just to get them away from here, and after their last meeting Janeway believed the entity owed them a favour.

"Captain," Tuvok suddenly said, his expression becoming grim even through that Vulcan calm of his. "Sensors are detecting another transwarp signature. It's another Borg Cube."

Janeway's heart went cold. Two Borg Cubes and they were barely able to stop one. How would they be able to stop a second one?

"Captain," Janeway turned her head when she saw the surprise in Tuvok's voice. "The second Borg ship is firing on the first."

"What?!"

"Put in on-screen, Tuvok," Chakotay ordered rationally, seeing for himself that Janeway was too surprised to make the order herself.

The image on the screen showed a sight no-one could have expected. Two Borg Cubes, the newer one just as heavily damaged as the first, was firing on the first. Chakotay walked slowly to the handrails on the command platform just right behind Tom's station, the tactician in him honed by both Starfleet training and his time as a Maquis commander told him while the first Cube was crewed by Borg drones who were more aggressive since it was firing more heavily than the drones of the second Borg ship.

Chakotay slammed his eyes shut in reflex as the second Cube scored a nasty hit on the outer hull of its sister vessel, and the first Cube launched a counterattack which spoke volumes about the desperate savagery of the drones on board. He and the rest of the crew were aware Species 8472 had done something to the Collective mind of the Borg, but looking at the screen, comparing the two vessels with a tactical eye Chakotay could tell that the drones on the second Cube were behaving in a more rational manner when compared to the drones on the first ship, who seemed to be firing everything without bothering to target their weapons properly.

But despite the seeming differences between the drones of the two ships, the Borg Cubes were evenly matched. It was starting to look as if the two Cubes would be fighting one another until doomsday.

And then their prayers were answered.

"Captain, the first Borg Cube's weapons and defensive systems are losing power. Their outer hull is beginning to decay," Harry reported suddenly. "It looks like its' working, Captain; the nanoprobes are eating the ship's hull. Quite rapidly, as well by the look of it."

"Let's see it."

The screen jumped again, showing the outer hull of the Borg Cube. It took them a moment to see what Harry's sensors had picked up considering just how badly damaged the hull had been _before_ the attack, but after a moment it was impossible not to see it.

Visually the outer hull seemed to be melting like a chunk of black-grey ice under a particularly hot sun. Massive fiery cracks appeared in the hull, followed by explosions.

"Tom, get us to a safe distance!" the order was out of Janeway's mouth before the cracks on the Cubes' outer hull widened while explosions rippled across the hull.

The Borg Cube exploded just as Paris carried the order out, and on the viewscreen, they could see the second Borg Cube, seeing the danger as well, moved rapidly away before it too was caught up in the explosion.

"Captain," Harry called before anyone could check for any damage to the ship's systems. "The second Borg Cube…we're being hailed. It's a visual message, and they're rather insistent."

Janeway turned to look at her ops manager in surprise. Even after everything they had experienced, seen and endured, especially now they had witnessed some of the war between the Collective and an extradimensional species, it was hard to picture the Borg ever contacting them.

Usually, Borg transmissions were audio, threats of assimilation and resistance being futile.

To receive an insistent, visual message was something new.

"Let's hear what they have to say," Janeway said, holding up a hand in order to stop any protests, but none came, it seemed the prospect of speaking to the Borg was an unexpected experience for them as well, but her mind was on the message and for buying time while she let her mind come up with any way they could deal with this…

The moment the visual contact was made, all thoughts of fighting the Borg fled her mind. She was stunned by what she was seeing.

On the screen was a small party of people who were clearly Borg drones, or they had been until fairly recently. Janeway's eyes scanned them all slowly, all of the Borg still had their exoplating and their cybernetic appendages were still there on some of the former drones, but it looked like their Borg selves were melting.

On all of the drones, pieces of exoplating had been shed, exposing their flesh, which was starting to look less pale and mottled with that unnerving and horrific appearance all the Borg drones had which made it look like the Collective was made up by people exhumed from a multi-species cemetery.

Now their original skin pigmentation was returning, some of it was more advanced on some of the former drones than on others, but it was there.

Janeway scanned the small crowd for a moment, recognising (to her delight) there were humans in the crowd, and they weren't the only Alpha Quadrant species present either; there were a couple of Klingons, what looked like Vulcans, a Cardassian, and what even a Ferengi.

But there were other species there Janeway recognised.

There was a Talaxian present, with the spots almost completely clear of their entombment under the ghastly Borg implants, and even what looked like Kazon, and although she had recently met them, she had no problems recognising a Voth and a Nyrian.

Standing in the centre of the group, the exoplating around her shoulders removed with some of the implants around her head gone as well while her once caucasian skin was being restored, and sickly looking strands of blonde hair were reappearing was a female drone. Janeway had to fight a shudder as she looked at the other woman's face.

The otherwise beautiful face was marred by patches of Borg skin and implants - she even had a protruding optical implant - mixing incongruously with her clearly human features.

Even stranger was the smile on the female Borg's face, although it was marred by curiosity.

" _You're the Starship Voyager, yes?"_

Janeway was surprised by the politely asked question. "Yes, we are," she replied slowly, wondering where this was going while she noted the woman's deep voice.

In response the former female Borg drone smiled and nodded, but then her expression became more serious.

" _What did you do to that other Borg ship?"_ she asked.

Janeway hesitated. She didn't like the thought of telling these clearly liberated drones they had the means of attacking Borg ships because they had no idea how they would react. "We came up with the means of fighting the Borg on an even footing," she said instead as a short bluff. "Thank you for helping."

" _We had to,"_ the former female drone said with a shrug which was another oddity before her expression became more serious. " _With the collapse of the Borg Collective, predicting the actions of those who survived and was severed from the Collective consciousness safely is a difficult task. Many of us have gone insane."_

Janeway remembered what she had seen on that Cube some time ago and she shuddered.

The female drone's expression became more plaintive. " _Do you have a doctor on your ship? Many of us on this ship is slowly removing our former Borg appendages and we would like to accelerate our return to our former selves."_

Janeway was surprised by the manner in which the former drone worded her request. "Yes, we do," she replied, already working out what they could make with this new turn of events.

" _Good,"_ the female drone smiled briefly and then it faded a little. " _And we can also talk."_

"About what?"

" _Getting home. My name is Annika Hansen. I was assimilated by the Borg nearly twenty years ago, when I was six years old, and I and many on this Cube, would like to go home."_


	15. Chapter 15 Unease

I don't own Star Trek in any form; if I did, the abomination known as Star Trek Discovery would have been more believable and the Klingons would have been better, and in keeping with canon. I would also have written a series where time travel, alternate timelines, and more of the Terran Empire were important staples. There would have been more series as well, but hey that's what Fanfiction is for, eh?

Please let me know what you think.

* * *

The Voyager Exile.

Kathryn Janeway had seen and heard many bizarre things in her career, but she had never encountered a Borg, or a former Borg drone in this case, who wanted to return home before. Certainly, none of the former drones of the Borg Cooperative they had encountered some months ago had wanted to go home since they had found a place to live on that planet in the Nekritt Expanse, but then again she hadn't expected her ship or her crew to be dragged into a war involving the Borg Collective and an extra-dimensional species.

"You want to go home?"

She didn't know or even understand _why she found it odd_ to even ask that question, but nothing today had gone as she'd expected.

The Borg drone, Annika Hansen (she made a mental note to find out about this particular woman in the Federation database, her and the other former Borg who came from the Alpha Quadrant), scowled which made the stark and menacing implants embedded all over her face even more menacing.

" _You don't think you're the only ones who want to go home, are you?"_

"No," Janeway replied hurriedly. "It's just startling to meet a former Borg drone who has regained her individuality."

The scowl eased up. " _Well, we're some of the rare exceptions, Captain. Many of the Borg in the galaxy have gone insane to the point of being reduced to a barbaric state. But there are some who were infected with viruses which separated us from the Hive Mind, but didn't damage our mental state."_

"I'm glad to hear that," Janeway said diplomatically. "How many former Borg are onboard your Cube who wish to return to the Alpha Quadrant?"

" _Seventy-five. We on the Cube have been aware of your presence for some time, and we've been trying to track you down; many of the former Borg on this vessel belongs to different parts of the galaxy and are working with other former Borg on other vessels who have been freed from the influence of the Hive Mind and the Queen to return former drones to their worlds and peoples, or to set up colonies on remote worlds. In our case, because we know of you, we have spent the last few weeks tracking you down. The Cube and the former drones are willing to part with a single Transwarp coil and a copy of all the Borg files on Transwarp mechanics and theory, and some star charts of the Quadrant, among other things,"_ Annika said.

 _Seventy-five?_

The number echoed through Janeway's mind. She knew the Borg had been aware of the human race and other Alpha Quadrant species for a long time. She knew, from her briefings and what she had picked up during her time in Starfleet, the Collective had assimilated millions on outposts and colonies as well as ships.

The Neutral Zone outposts on both sides, the colony of Jouret IV, the starships lost in the Battle of Wolf 359, and so many others. So why were there so few drones on the Cube?

She decided to just get on with it and get some answers to her questions so she could come up with plans concerning the former drones on the Cube who wanted to come with them. "Why are there so few former drones who come from our corner of the galaxy?"

Annika sighed. " _I was wondering if you were going to ask me that, Captain. The Borg fleet was destroyed by Species 8472, and those who have survived have been afflicted with many neural pathogens which have either driven us insane, or they've had other effects which we either know or don't know about because we can't hear what they're saying to each other. Those who have survived and still have their sanity has been forced to travel to distant parts of the galaxy to avoid the risk of further infection and are currently making plans to return as many of their drones to their homeworlds and societies…if the Collective didn't destroy them. The seventy-five former drones on this ship are the only ones who come from the Alpha Quadrant and wish to return home. We may encounter other Cubes who have their own former Alpha and Beta Quadrant drones on them, but ours is the only closest Cube to you. But even if we don't, the Cubes will return their former Alpha and Beta Quadrant drones to where they came from."_

 _God, that will certainly make many of the Alpha Quadrant powers panic,_ Janeway thought to herself, mentally picturing how the Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, the Ferengi, the Breen, and the Cardassians would react if they detected any Borg vessels near their area, or even caught wind of a Borg Cube nearby.

But still….

She knew the addition of seventy-five former drones onboard Voyager would stretch the ships' resources, but at the same time there was a chance they could help, especially with the Transwarp technology. Yes, while the coil these former Borg were offering might not get them all the way home, they were still offering their help. Surely that was enough? But at heart Janeway was a Starfleet officer. It was her job to render aid to those who needed it, regardless of whomever they were.

She exchanged a look with Chakotay. She knew her lover well enough to know what he was thinking just by looking into his face. Aside from the typical and expected feelings towards the Borg - wariness, fear, and readying himself to jump into the fray in case the former drones on that ship tried anything, Chakotay looked intrigued and she could tell in his features alone he was telling her to give the former Borg a chance. She was intrigued by that herself, given how she had seen how he had handled what Riley Frasier and the other members of the Cooperative had done to him and his head when they'd met them, even though Chakotay usually self-internalised his stronger feelings and kept them to himself.

Chakotay's expression alone meant more to Janeway since she could see that he was as fascinated as she was herself.

But at the same time, they focused on the risks involved.

What if some of the former Borg was more unstable than the others? The rest of the former drones wouldn't know. How could they without the connection to the Hive mind? Plans and counter-plans went through Janeway's mind, but as long as they were careful and carefully watched the former Borg then it would be easier for them to see if this Annika was sincere.

"Very well," she said to the former Borg drone, knowing instantly that several of the bridge crew were both shocked and on their guard with that one announcement. "You can come along for the ride. We can give you an hour to sort yourselves out before you beam over."

She purposefully gave the former Borg that time scale to also prepare her own crew and ship for their arrival. Unfortunately, it appeared that this Annika Hansen had seen through the plan as soon as it passed Janeway's lips, but the former Borg drone nodded in acceptance. "We understand," she said. "See you then."

With that, the transmission was cut.

XXX

 _Captain's log: Stardate 5566.1_

 _Aside from some warnings and outcry from the crew, the decision to allow the former Borg onboard Voyager has been accepted while the senior staff and myself work on ways to ensure the former drones don't cause any harm. I wish these precautions weren't necessary, but after our previous meeting with the Borg who have been freed from the Hive, and the current state of the Borg now the war has taken a turn for the worst, I only hope the former drones see the logic behind the plans._

XXX

Chakotay strode up to the doors of the holodeck feeling butterflies in the stomach as he did while Kathryn walked alongside him. He glanced at the face of his lover, seeing the same emotions playing on her beautiful face as they walked towards the doors. There wasn't any room in sickbay for seventy-five former Borg drones, so the Doctor had immediately arranged for a facility in one of the holodecks to receive and to treat them, although the more intensive cases would be sent straight to sickbay for treatment if need be.

Like Kathryn, he felt nervous about having the former Borg drones onboard Voyager, but unlike Kathryn, he had had them in his mind and they had once been so desperate they had seized control of his body. The invasion had unsettled Chakotay given all the talk Riley and the others had given him how they were not the Borg and how they knew about the nightmare they'd been forced to live as drones, only for them to take control of his body when they were attacked by that bunch of former drones who'd degenerated into a thuggish state because they were incapable of moving on.

Chakotay knew this was different, but at the same time, he wondered if these former drones would be nothing but trouble if they came with the rest of the crew.

The doors opened for them and the couple saw for themselves the rooms of beds the Doctor had prepared for each of the drones. The Doctor hadn't bothered to program the holodeck for anything elaborate, but he had used the holodeck to create holograms of various famous Starfleet doctors from Phlox, Leonard H. McCoy, Beverly Crusher, a woman Chakotay recognised as Katherine Pulaski and several others to help him care for the former Borg while a few of Voyager's medical personnel were going from bed to bed to see of the needs of the former drones. Chakotay wondered how each one of them was handling the current situation, but he was impressed with their professional manners.

As they walked in, seeing the state of several of the former drones, Chakotay wondered if this was how it had originally gone for Riley and Orum when their own connections were snapped. Some of the former drones had taken advantage it seemed of the disconnection from the Hive mind and they had started to remove their Borg appendages - one former drone had removed what clearly had been a prosthetic arm and had left it as nothing more than a sinister stump. The Borg had neatly amputated the original limb and replaced it with a servo to connect the limb to the new prosthetic arm. The sight of the remaining flesh, grey like the rest of typical Borg skin, made Chakotay feel sick. Another former drone had removed great swaths of their exoplating from their body.

One look around the holodeck showed both Chakotay and Janeway that many of the former drones had taken the law in their own hands and had begun stripping their bodies clear of any sign of their assimilation. Chakotay could not blame them, and he felt pity for them. He had not seen from Riley's perspective what her life as a Borg had been like, but from what Orum had said they carried the memories with them in the same way people who had caused atrocities in their lives only to change later in life did. It was clear the same was true here.

Others had decided to wait for a bit before they removed their own Borg technology which had enslaved them to the Hive Mind for so long, although why Chakotay had no idea. He would have guessed they would have wanted nothing more than to see the back of their former appendages and find a way to get on with their lives now they were free. But as he thought about it, Chakotay wondered if it was because they were afraid that if they touched the implants and the rest of their prosthetics the former drones would have their connections with the Borg Collective Consciousness restored full blast.

Janeway meanwhile was looking around the holodeck with horror. She had met many of the Borg Cooperative but all of those former Borg had been, more or less, free from their lives from the Collective. She had imagined once or twice during that business what had happened to the Cooperative when that storm had freed them from the Collective's hold, but this was the first time she had seen anything like this on this scale; that scene where she had seen the inside of the Cube where every one of the Borg had cannibalised themselves sprang to mind, but this was different.

"Captain," Janeway looked up when she heard the sound of the Doctor's voice and she saw the holographic doctor striding towards her, followed closely by Annika Hansen. One look at the former drone showed Janeway she had taken steps herself to strip away the exoplating from her body which the Borg had imposed on her which hadn't been visible when they had spoken to each other over the viewscreen. Some of it had been peeled away from her arms and some from her right leg and chest, exposing scarred skin from where the plating had once been. But unlike some of the other former drones, it looked gradual, and Janeway wondered why before she guessed the woman in front of her had been in the two camps - on one side she wanted to get rid of the Borg appendages which covered her entire body both in and out, but on the other, she was afraid that if she managed to get it all off it would find its way back.

"Doctor," Janeway greeted the EMH, sending a look at the former Borg with her. "Are they alright?" She added, waving a hand around the room, hoping the Doctor caught on to her unspoken question whether or not they were at risk in case the Borg mind reasserted itself.

"I've had to send a few of them to sickbay, but those are the ones who attempted some improvised surgery on themselves to remove the Borg hardware. I will need to examine them properly, but all of them are showing signs of implant rejection. Their systems are reasserting themselves very quickly, rejecting every implant in their bodies," the Doctor looked around the room, focusing the most on the former Borg who had removed the most implants and plating from their bodies before he returned his attention to Janeway and Chakotay.

"What about the rest of their Borg systems, the neural transceiver for instance?" Chakotay asked more bluntly.

"Our links have been severed," Annika Hansen spoke for the first time, softening her gaze as best as she could, although it was hard with the optical implant which had replaced her entire right eye. "Believe me, we understand the dangers of being reconnected to the Hive mind. Some of us - engineers and scientists who were assimilated by the Collective - are trying to find ways of removing the transceivers from our bodies without us dying."

Janeway shuddered at the thought of a cybernetic species digging its claws into the biology of its victims which would leave so many harmful components behind and would kill them if they somehow managed to be freed. For a moment she thought about Riley Frazier, Jean-Luc Picard, and all the others who had managed to escape the Collective in some manner, and she wondered just how they coped with the remnants of Borg technology still in their bodies.

"I'm sorry," Chakotay said in that soft measured voice of his while she was thinking to herself she would quietly speak to Picard about his experiences as Locutus, "it's just we've-."

"It's alright," Annika interrupted softly. "We know how you feel, in fact, I don't think we'd be surprised if you'd alerted your security to keep a watch on us."

Janeway was astonished by the blunt but apt way this former drone spoke, and she studied the other woman carefully. It was virtually impossible to tell just how old Annika Hansen was with the implants covering her body, but from what she could see Janeway guessed Annika was young, much younger than she'd have expected.

Another former Borg drone approached, with more implants and plating removed from his body than Annika. No, not removed; Janeway saw the very clear, but slightly healed wounds. The implants looked like they had been torn off roughly without any kind of finesse from Korok's body. Janeway studied him, seeing instantly that he was a Klingon. "Captain Janeway? General Korok, Klingon Defence Force."

Janeway was surprised. She hadn't expected a high ranking Klingon officer to suddenly come onboard her ship but she quickly pushed her surprise back. "General," she greeted politely while she put her Captain's face back on. "Welcome on board Voyager."

Korok smiled which made him look quite fierce and sinister especially with the implants and the optical implant. "Thank you. I also thank you for being close by. I hope we have not been an inconvenience."

Janeway hadn't expected the diplomatic approach from the Klingon, but she knew from her own experiences with the KDF over the years the Klingon flag officers had needed to learn the art of diplomacy, but it was rare for her to encounter it. "It's not, we're always happy to give people from our quadrant who've been found here a lift back home."

Sure, while Amelia Earhart and the rest of the 37s and those two bastard Ferengi hadn't wanted to return with them back to the Alpha Quadrant, Janeway had been more than happy to let them come with the rest of the Voyager crew (she regretted the fact Amelia hadn't come; as a girl, Janeway had been enamoured with many female role models, and Earhart was near the top of the list).

"Thank you," Korok glanced at Annika Hansen for a moment, and that one look was deeper than Janeway than expected. These two clearly knew each other quite well. How was that possible? When you were assimilated by the Borg, your minds became part of the group mind. Individuals could not interact in that state.

"What happened to you, General? I mean, how were you assimilated?" Chakotay asked curiously.

"My ship was sent on a deep space exploration mission in the Gamma Quadrant after the Bajoran wormhole was discovered. Our primary task was to find new sites for colonies and sectors containing large quantities of mineral resources, to explore it and encounter sufficiently advanced races to gather star charts from and then to return them to Qo'nos for analysis in the hope of expanding the Empire into the Gamma Quadrant," Korok explained, although the mention of the Gamma Quadrant had surprised Janeway, after a moment her surprise ebbed and died.

She had been, like so many, surprised but fascinated by the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole, the only known wormhole in existence which was stable and allowed rapid travel to another part of the galaxy, and before her assignment to Voyager she had wanted to be one of the captains in command of a ship sent to explore the Gamma Quadrant but it had never happened. Janeway hadn't thought of that part of her life in a long time, and she found it ironic really; for a long time she had wanted to explore a relatively unknown corner of the Milky Way galaxy, and while she hadn't gotten command of any ship despatched through the Bajoran wormhole, she had found herself in the Delta Quadrant trying desperately get her crew and her ship home.

"We were exploring a particularly large sector of the Gamma Quadrant, examining a new power generator we had acquired from an alien race when the Borg attacked. They overpowered my ship in minutes," Korok went on, his voice dark and solemn as he remembered what had happened. "We fought against them with our disruptors and hand to hand combat, but the end result was the same. We were assimilated by those cybernetic things and became Borg ourselves."

"It's alright, Korok, we're free," Annika Hansen whispered, her own remaining eye haunted with her own dark memories of how her life had been stolen from her by the Borg.

"I know. But unfortunately, I'm the only one of my crew on this ship," Korok told her with a familiarity that only came with a close friendship. "I have no idea where the others are, or if they're halfway to the Alpha Quadrant on another ship by now."

"Hopefully when you've installed the coil on our ship, we can catch up to them," Chakotay said reassuringly although it was clear the subject of another ship and crew getting close to the Alpha Quadrant was painful for him to talk about.

"Maybe," Korok said sceptically.

XXX

"All in all, the former drones are in good shape considering what they've gone through; out of the seventy-five who've come onboard, over thirty-three of them needed to go straight to sickbay for surgery to remove the worst of their implants," the Doctor was saying during the next staff meeting. "The rest are still in the holodeck, being tended for and treated."

"How are those in sickbay doing?" Chakotay asked.

Tom rubbed an eye and leaned forward. As Kes' replacement as the Doctor's assistant even if the helm officer wondered if the hologram would ever stop irritating him, he had seen more of what was happening in sickbay than most, and it showed in his features. "Some of them are doing better than others, but we're getting there. The trouble is so many of them were so desperate to remove their implants and plating they practically ripped it off."

"They probably couldn't wait to get rid of it," Harry commented before he looked around seriously. "Where are we going to put them? They need to sleep?"

Janeway sighed. "I've been thinking about that, but I'm lost. I have a few suggestions, but I'd like your input," she added invitingly around the room.

"We could ask around, ask any of the crew if they'd be okay with having to share with them?" Neelix suggested, although his tone sounded dubious no-one was truly surprised given the Borg's reputation.

"There are seventy-five of them, and besides I doubt you'd get that many volunteers," B'elanna commented.

As much as she would like to say differently Janeway had the horrible suspicion B'elanna was right. Many people logically hated and feared the Borg Collective, and there were very few willing to forgive anyone who was in the same position as the Cooperative or the former drones on Voyager now. But when they had met the Cooperative before they took over control of Chakotay, the crew had seemed alright with the former drones, so there was some hope.

"Ask around anyway," she ordered, "but I think we need to find alternative accommodations for them in case no-one wants them around. How is the installation of the transwarp coil?" She changed the subject and looked over at B'elanna.

"The coil is in engineering now. A couple of the….former Borg," B'elanna paused as if unsure of how to properly describe them, "have offered to help in the installation, but I told them I needed time to examine it."

Janeway lifted a brow. She was positive B'elanna was telling the truth, but she had the feeling the tempestuous half Klingon was slightly prejudiced towards the former Borg. "Let them help," she ordered, "Examine it but at the same time let them help you. The former Borg drones know more about transwarp theory and technology than we do. I want us to be able to squeeze a lot of distance across the Delta Quadrant; 10,000 light-years, 30,000, it doesn't matter so long as we cut our journey short as much as possible. We need their expertise. Work with them, B'elanna," she said in a voice which brooked no argument.

B'elanna looked like she was on the verge of arguing back, but she saw the look on Janeway's face and realised it was hopeless to argue back. "Aye, Captain."

Janeway sighed and folded her hands. "It will be hard," she began softly while her mind was on the former Borg, however. Her chief engineer's attitude worried her and she was concerned it will spill out in public, something she was determined not to allow. "I know that to many the former Borg are just that, enemies. However, we will not treat them like that. But we will keep watch over them to make sure nothing happens."

"They seem reasonable and peaceful enough," Chakotay said in that soft, measured tone of his which he often used to diplomatically make his point. "However, I agree we should take precautions; make sure they don't have any access to our weapon or critical systems."

"A wise precaution. However, I am confused about what they will be doing when we get underway? Surely not all of them will be working on the transwarp coils?" Tuvok said.

"Mm, good point," Janeway said, annoyed that she hadn't thought about that herself.

"What if we take a step back and look at the technology on this ship as it is now?" Tom asked thoughtfully.

"How do you mean?" Chakotay asked.

"Well, this ship was state of the art when she was launched, and ever since we entered the Delta Quadrant we've been adding on and improving Voyager's systems as we've gone. But now we've got former Borg on board, we can advantage of their knowledge in different fields of science and engineering which can improve our chances of getting home. There are dozens of systems they can improve with their knowledge; stellar cartography, the holodeck systems, the engines, our tactical systems - I know, we don't want to give them any temptations, but let's face it; they know a lot, and with them on board, we can improve our lot and still give them something meaningful to do," Tom looked around the staff table to see how the idea was taking them.

"That's actually not a bad idea," Harry said thoughtfully. "There are dozens of systems that could do with upgrades, and they could also teach us techniques we don't even know about."

"Yeah," Torres snorted. "Techniques which they stole from dozens of now dead races."

"That's enough," Chakotay snapped to the visible surprise of everyone in the room, Torres included. "We can't blame them for something they weren't in control of, but they have the knowledge and we should use it."

"I agree," Janeway forestalled any further interruption although she had to admit she was curious about Chakotay's attitude. She made a mental note to get to the bottom of it later tonight. "I don't like the idea of a form of grave robbing, but those people were not in control of their actions but were in fact controlled by the Hive, and they can be of great help to us. In the meantime, I'm going to pitch the idea to them and see how they take it. Dismissed."

As they left the briefing room, Janeway sat down in her chair for a moment, thinking about what she had just seen. She knew B'elanna had no love for the Borg. None of them did. And in a way she was right, however, there was nothing they could do about what the Collective and the drones slaved to its control had done to those millions of people who'd resisted the Collective for centuries.

"Penny for them?"

She looked into Chakotay's dark eyes, toying with the idea of finding out what had made her lover act like that before she decided not to. She'd wait until later when things were calm. "I was just thinking about that meeting. I don't want fights to break out throughout the ship over those former Borg helping us-."

"We're going to have to see it as a possibility," Chakotay interrupted her with blunt logic. "It's likely there will be crew members who had relatives who were killed in the Battle of Wolf 359, or the numerous other skirmishes. Hopefully, the former drones will be expecting it, in fact, I doubt they wouldn't be waiting for it."

Janeway knew he was right. "How far do you think we'll get with the transwarp coil they're giving us?"

"And the coil that we've already got on board? I don't know. If we can get 50,000 light-years, we'll be much closer to home than ever," Chakotay said.

"B'elanna's been working on that coil for a while, but after that mess with the burnt-out one she's spent a long time studying it, but with the former drones helping her, then they would teach her a great deal about the mechanics and theory of transwarp travel," Janeway mused thoughtfully.

Chakotay chuckled at the thought of B'elanna being taught like an academy student about transwarp theory. "So, what is the plan?" He asked.

"Wait until they've recovered enough, and then let them work," Janeway said, "and then we can think about the transwarp flight. In the meantime…. Can you get me a list of all the former Borg on the ship, I'd like to know more about them?"

Chakotay nodded. "No problem. I'll do it once my shift is over."

"Okay, good," Janeway stood up. "Take over. I want to start by looking up Annika Hansen."

"Why are you interested in her?"

"She seems younger than the others, different. She interests me," she said and with that, she stood up and walked to her ready room.


End file.
